Tag Archive for: weather

Top Ten Reasons for Sky Gazing

As far as sky gazing goes, nobody needs a reason. It’s perfectly legal to stand still and look up into the sky (except perhaps in traffic), doing nothing at all but absorbing the grand beauty of nature in her most accessible view, the infinite view above.
But if somebody asks you why, you can use one of these ready-made reasons:
The Top Ten Reasons for Sky Gazing
19. If you’re not careful you’ll lose all track of time. (A good thing.)
18. It’s a chance to take a deep breath, pause and relax. Heaven requires nothing of you, thank heaven.
17. You get a sense of the vastness of the universe.
16. You can find shapes in the clouds, and then name them. I see a whale! I see a giraffe! I see a funny guy with horn-rimmed glasses on a kangaroo!
15. Unexpected occurrences can sometimes spontaneously appear. Check in often.
14. You can learn to read the clouds and predict the likely course of the oncoming weather.
13. You can spot meteors. The word “meteor” means anything that falls from the sky, including rain, snow and ice. That’s why study of the weather is called “meteorology.”
12. You’ll spot falling pianos before they hit. Which are also meteors.
11. If you enjoy being in nature and watching its changes through day and week and season, watch the sky! You can’t always get to the beach, or walk in the woods, or climb a mountain, but you can always get to the sky at least sometime during the day.
10. Visibility in clear air can be as much as 100 miles straight up. Where else can you see that distance?
9. Looking upward is looking inward, and a chance to breathe and relax into your body.
8. It’s always changing. It’s never the same.
7. It makes you happy to look upward. Social scientists have proven it. I think.
6. You can identify the cloud types you see. Puffy Cumulus, wispy Cirrus, leaden-sky Stratus, rainy Nimbus, tempestuous Cumulonimbus. Learning about the clouds will tell you much about the weather to come.
5. There’s always something new and interesting going on.
4. Visibility at night is, theoretically, infinity. Where else can you see that distance?
3. If you look up at the sky in a crowd, pretty soon everyone else will look up, too. Try it! It works. Start thinking of yourself as a Sky Ambassador.
2. It’s just big, that’s all.
1. And the Number One reason to watch the sky: It feels good!
Feel free to print off your Sky Gazer badge, below, courtesy of Skyboy Photos!semi circle
Happy sky gazing!

Tales of the Unexpected

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Happy Anniversary: the first Skyboy Photo!

Struck by Fire
I was in the garden, I remember,  pulling weeds and looking for aphids, when I happened to look up from my work to see this — apparition — hanging over the treetops like an impromptu party decoration, curly clouds lit up in a vibrant crimson.  I’d never seen a cloud like this, seemingly on fire in the bright sunset, and I ran inside the house to grab my camera.

I’d been bitten.

I’m celebrating Skyboy Photos’ Anniversary this August 23, twenty-five years after that first photograph, and after becoming hooked on the magical and unpredictable beauty of the sky,  the two hundred miles of atmosphere that we live beneath, and the weather that it produces.

In the ensuing years I’ve seen many wondrous sights and glorious vistas that I certainly would have missed if I hadn’t started paying attention. And I don’t even have to travel! I’ve found that if you just stay put and pay attention, eventually something interesting, beautiful, strange, or all three, will happen overhead.
That first photo was taken with what was called, in the olden days, film.  We’ve had digital cameras for so long now, that I almost don’t remember what it was like having to take a picture and then wait three days to see if it came out. And not being able to do much about it, if it didn’t. I also remember spending money, lots of money.

Lens Kwik Photo of  Kansas City did all of my processing work. As I walked in the door with yet another three rolls of 36-exposure film, all used up on skies, skies, skies, Jean the owner looked up from her photo printing machine and said dryly, “Well, hello there, Sky Boy!”
The name has stuck.

Blue Skies and Black

My love affair with the sky actually goes back even further than that. Somewhat more than twenty-five years ago, when I was a lad of about eight years, I remember lying on my back on the brick patio outside our house. I was going for an Astronomy merit badge in Boy Scouts, and one of the assignments placed me there on the ground, looking up at the nighttime sky, I don’t remember exactly why.


I could see the Milky Way, and planets, and millions and billions upon zillions of stars, twinkling confetti floating in the nighttime sky . Lying there on the bricks, seeing nothing but the sky in my view, I had a sudden exhilarating sensation of near-vertigo,  as if I were lying on a mere six-foot pebble of rock, an asteroid floating and  spinning through space, travelling dizzyingly past all those stars and worlds and nebulae and galaxies that I could see from our suburban Pittsburgh home.

I got a telescope soon after, and begin to watch the night sky with it. Then I grew up, and other things happened, and some long time later, I was reminded by a friend about my boyhood fascination. I thought it might be fun to get a telescope again and try watching the night sky. My deep-sky photography has been one of the outcomes of this renewed interest, and it feels like this completes some kind of circle, I don’t know what. Perhaps in the way that I see that nature presenting herself to us in her infinite different ways, beautiful in every manifestation, and more interesting and gratifying the more you look, in every realm and scale.

Looking Up

You can visit my website at Skyboy Photos to see photographs, film and digital, of some of the memorable moments I have witnessed over the last twenty-five years. available as handmade Greeting Cards and Photographic Prints.

But more importantly, I hope you remember the next time you may happen to go outdoors, or if you are already outdoors, and focused (as indeed you should be) on the task at hand and the next thing you need to be doing in your day, or whomever you’re talking with or whatever you may be reading — well, I hope you happen, like I did, to glance up for just a moment. And when you do, I hope you are surprised by the unexpected, and delighted by the sheer wonder of the sky.

By day,

Weather rules us

By night we glimpse neighbors

The sky is our window and our

Ocean

             — David Bayard

Clouds

Clouds are great fun to watch.

Sitting under a tree, high on a hill, you gaze up to the sky for a few moments and you daydream. The rest of your life falls away as you watch the clouds slowly, imperceptibly roll across the heavens . Then you sigh again, take a sip of lemonade, and  pick up your book  to read for a while.

When you look up again, barely ten minutes later, the sky is totally different. Some clouds are gone and new ones have taken their place.  A whole new cloud deck is rolling in. How did the sky manage that sleight-of-hand? You look again and watch, and yes, just as before, the clouds are barely moving. Almost motionless. How did they do that so fast?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRl_uNVrcrQ

But when you play the sky’s endless movie at fast-forward,  a whole different story emerges!

The cumulus clouds which had seemed to be simply floating by like cotton balls are seen to be forming and dissolving at the same time, continually flowing through forms, coming and going in random disorder, appearing and disappearing throughout their short lives.
And you can see how the clouds pull themselves up by their own bootstraps: once an area of cloud starts condensing, the condensing moisture releases heat, which warms the air. The air rises. That pulls in more moist air to replace it. That air condenses, warms, rises, pulls in more moisture…the cloud feeds on its own growth in a positive feedback loop, like a microphone held too close to a speaker.

Clouds is Water

Sunlight and Rain

There is a classification system for clouds, but it’s only moderately helpful in deciphering cloud mysteries. There are too many types of clouds. There are clouds that fit in more than one category, or fit in between categories. Some defy categorization.

But what all clouds have in common is water.  Think of what your cool lemonade glass did once the waiter laid it on your table. The outside of the glass condenses water just like cold air condenses water out of warm, moist air. Then it’s just a matter of how many infinite ways warm moist air can be introduced to colder air, and in what shapes and fashions and situations.

To Make a Cloud

Of all the planets, only Earth (that we know of) has abundant water in all three of its possible phases: solid ice, liquid water, and gas vapor. Mars is too cold, Venus is too hot, but on our world, temperatures are just right. And the sun’s heat makes sure water is changing from one phase to another all the time.
Vapor in the air condenses into droplets that float and we call it a cloud. Droplets bump together and collect to form bigger droplets that sink to earth. We call it anything from a gentle filmy mist to a thundering downpour. Droplets freeze and fall as snow, sleet or hail.

Midwestern Ice Storm


Midwestern Ice Storm

Or vapor directly freezes to frost or rime ice on everything it touches. Or it falls as liquid  rain and freezes instantly when it lands,  pulling down mighty oaks by sheer weight.
Finally, water which has collected in lakes, oceans, soil, and living things (like us), evaporates back into gas, and we have sweltering humidity, dew and fog, and clouds. Moisture has come full circle, and is reunited with the deep blue sky.

Glaciation (Freezing Raindrops)


Glaciation (Freezing Raindrops)

Some of the most dramatic and fascinating displays of weather in the sky are the result of water changing from one phase to another. Nature seems to delight in creating different ways for things to mix and interact. Even a single type of event, like a snowflake or a cloud, is never repeated in exactly the same way twice.

Boundaries, borders and edges

The most interesting things in the sky occur at the boundaries between other things. The point of contact between two continent-sized air masses is where weather occurs. The boundary between earth and sky is the scene for fog, frost and dew, when we get to literally live in the clouds for a while. The boundaries between cold air, warm air, wet air, dry air, dirty, clean, moving or still, high or low, neutral or electrically charged air — all these boundaries produce their own special spectacles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yjCvdTmLnU

The border between day and night produces spectacular displays only possible with the low, red light from the sun on the horizon. The low light of dawn and twilight also punches up the contrast of clouds, outlines and defines their shapes more sharply than during the day. Sometimes two, three, four or even more cloud decks are all doing different things at the same time.

Three Cloud Decks at once


Three Cloud Decks at once

But the best way to learn about clouds is to live with them. Watch them. Go back up on the hill and spend some time watching. It’s really great fun!