Entries tagged "shadows"
2010-12-20
Last night I divided my time between two very different arenas of the modern human experience. I watched dross on TV, including some Jonathan Dross himself, but then I found the antidote to such inanity. I nipped out regularly to put markers down in the snow, as I watched the moon's shadows march west across the white.
I took some photos of the results of my moon shadow stick, together with a perfect north-south line, which I will be using on my Beginner's Guide to Natural Navigation courses. Yes, that is a bit of a tease, but…
2009-12-10
The recent cold snap brought by northerly winds left the first frost across the south of England. The southern side of this chimney was sheltered from the wind and this is how it may have escaped a frost. It certainly had nothing to do with any heat from the chimney, no fire had been lit in it for the week before.The other possibility is a gap in the roof's insulation allowing more heat from the home to escape. Judging from the second frost-free patch on the right, it looks like it might be time to crawl around in the attic.…
2009-11-06
On holiday I did try very hard not to think too much about navigation, but wherever I am I cannot resist checking that the sun is behaving itself appropriately considering my latitude and the season. At 7 degrees north, Phuket is in the northern hemisphere and the tropics and because the sun is now well south of the equator the short midday shadow is cast towards the north. Nearer June this same pencil would cast a shadow in the opposite direction at midday, to the south.This photo was actually taken eleven minutes after local midday, which is logical since it…
2009-06-04
In this photo that I took ten days ago of Totland Bay Pier on the Isle of Wight, there is a lot of blue. We become used to thinking of the sky and sea as blue, but in this picture it is easy to see how varied the colours can be. There is gradual shift from blue to off-white in the sky. In the sea there are three quite distinct bands, dark blue of deeper water, green-blue of shallow water and then light brown as the beach itself becomes visible through the water. There are also two other darker…
2009-05-12
A walk along the edge of Nutbourne marshes on the weekend was an early taste of real summer. A sunny May day often feels hotter than a midsummer one to me, perhaps because I have not yet acclimatised. There were thousands of midges and flies, swirling up from the drying seaweed to complete the sensation.These two pictures show the same field and only two minutes of walking passed between each shot. It is late afternoon and one of these is taken looking north, the shadows falling to the east and right of each furrow ridge.
2009-05-01
I try not to let politics enter my mind too much when out walking, but sometimes it helps to be aware of some of the tinkering that the political animals are up to. In the interests of the environment farmers are discouraged from working the land right up to the edge of woodland. They can set some of this land aside, typically a strip up to 8m, and be compensated for it through the government's Entry Level Stewardship scheme. The farmers are finely tuned into what is and is not productive land, they know from experience the parts of their…
2009-04-22
I can remember sitting at a restaurant in the small and perfectly formed fishing village of Trehiguier in southern Brittany last July. I had my back to the sun, which was setting behind the row of houses behind me. I watched the crisp edge of a chimney corner move upwards and to the right as the sun slipped down and to the left behind me. My poor wife had to watch me gauging the sun with a fist and then outstretched fingers and then listen to me predict when the chimney shadow would reach our table.Last night my wife was…
2009-04-20
Possibly the worst blog post title that I have yet come up with, and there have been a few...Our cat, Murphy, can be seen reflecting the direction of the last of the suns rays here.The tree shadows in the distance have broken free from the woodland in the background too for the first time this year at sunset.In the spirit of randomness to which this posting has succumbed I thought you might like this puzzle, set by a friend and former NN alumni.Do not be alarmed if my postings continue to be sporadic, poorly constructed, lacking in theme, good…
2009-04-09
A walk in the woods yesterday revealed some natural and unnatural clues.This primrose, the only one in the area, was unsurprisingly in a south-facing spot. The thick bed of south-facing moss that surrounds it on the beech roots should not surprise us. Moss grows in abundance close to the ground where moisture levels remain generally high, even in south-facing places. The technique of trail blazing, marking trees to show others the way is ancient, but the chalk markings on this beech tree were a little disconcerting. Apologies, the picture is out…
2009-03-31
In this photo you can see the dew that the sun has not yet burnt off. The shadow itself is mostly moving right to left in this picture, leaving the thin band of wet wood in the shade all the time. This thin band is a rough east-west line at all times of the year, but quite an accurate one at times like this, close to the spring and autumnal equinoxes.The small patch of moisture that is in the sun reveals the direction that the shadow is shortening, a crude north-south line as we near the middle of the day.
2009-03-23
As we move on away from the equinox I thought I would post this photo of the lines made by the shadow tip from a stick (or in this case a kids swingball!).These two lines are from the shadows approaching noon and only one day apart. Since it is the equinox, they are near exact east/west lines. The gap between the chalk lines is at its greatest at the equinox and closes to near zero at the solstices.On a slight tangent, it was a very similar method, ie. measuring the length of the shadows…
