Entries tagged "sunset"
2012-07-30
In the desert of western Peru there are the remnants of a civilization that still holds many mysteries.
Archaeoastromomers are able to deduce a few things about the ancient complex at Chankillo, from the alignment of 13 towers.
The towers form a north-south line, but this is not that unusual in ancient buildings. The thing that sets these towers apart is the fact that they span the annual range of sunrise, from winter or June solstice (northernmost tower) to summer or December solstice (southern tower), when viewed from a certain point.
There is a good view…
2011-10-11
It would be true to say that I would not be writing this blog if the sun rose in the same place each day. I don't mean that in a very general sense, it's not because the whole world would be very different and maybe the dinosaurs would have survived and humans would never have evolved, blah, blah...
No, it is because in the spring of 2008 I was busy trying to work out whether there was any point in trying to make a living by teaching natural navigation, or not. Whether, perhaps, that was the stupidest idea…
2011-03-19
Just managed to snap the 'supermoon' as it rose above the woodland to the east of me. This photo was taken tonight at 19.03 GMT.
Tonight's moon is the first time that a full moon has coincided with perigee, that is the moment when the moon is closest in its orbit, for 18 years. This is no ordinary perigee either, the moon will be 30,000 miles closer to Earth than usual. The result is what has been nicknamed a 'supermoon'.
The best time to appreciate its enlarged size is when it is close to your horizon, rising…
2010-07-11
A belated thank you to everyone who came to my talk at the Marine Studios in Margate a week ago, and another thanks to those who also bought a book afterwards.I arrived an hour early and walked down to the beautiful beach and went for a swim (yes that really is it in the photo). I then dried myself off in the beach car park, with the car radio on as I listened to Andy Murray losing, valiantly, to Rafael Nadal. A more British experience would be hard to imagine. I walked up to the Studios to give the talk,…
2010-06-28
Another very enjoyable Beginner's Guide to Natural Navigation course at West Dean College on Saturday. There were sailors, walkers, a forager and an army officer among the ever-varied student backgrounds. My thanks to all for coming.
Last night, shortly after 10.30, I took this photograph of the moon rising above the woods and emerging from behind thin clouds. It looks very much like a full moon, but is actually one day after full, a waning moon. It does highlight the difficulty of judging the phase of the moon accurately.
From an aesthetic perspective there is no…
2010-06-25
My thanks to everyone who came to my talk last night at the Weald and Downland Museum. What a wonderful place to spend a summer's evening, I recommend a visit to anyone who has yet to sample its delights.On a different note, I received a fascinating letter recently from someone who has read the book. They wrote to me with an unusual observation.I have touched the phenomenon of the 'green flash' at sunset in this blog and elsewhere, it is well documented and well heard-of. My correspondent is keen to learn more about something different and since I have…
2010-04-15
Last night I managed to take 46 photographs in a desperate bid to catch the elusive, and some like to say mythical, 'green flash' at the moment of sunset. The green flash is an optical phenomenon caused mainly by blue/green light bending more than the reds/yellows. There is a fuller description of its causes on Wikipedia.
I did not manage to see or capture the flash, but peering out across the Persian Gulf at the anchored ships, feeling the cool westerlies coming off its waters as the heat of the day faded... is not a bad way…
2010-02-16
'Courting bustards' is not an excellent new profanity, something that would sound good with rasping voice and sent in the general direction of a parking warden putting a ticket on your car, it is actually a reference to the romantic habits of the male great bustard bird.Researchers from the IE University School of Biology in Santa Cruz, Spain, have found that the male bustards align themselves with the sun when trying to attract a female. Their white feathers, the bustard's equivalent of an Armani suit/Ferrari/pair of Reeboks - delete as applicable, show up better when aligned to catch the sun's…
2010-02-02
I went for a walk in the South Downs yesterday afternoon. The air was cold, there were still chunks of ice lining the north-facing side of chalk ruts in the path. The sun was up for the first part of the walk and made direction-finding easy. When it fell below the hills to my southwest it gave different opportunities. One of my favourite dusk techniques is to use the light reflections of cloud edges to gauge where the sun must be behind higher ground. This photograph from 4.30pm yesterday shows this effect quite clearly. The sun is reaching the far…
2010-01-01
...from the Scottish Highlands.
2009-12-19
Yesterday afternoon I threw the snow off the Land Rover and headed out into the white - I had about half-a-dozen minor outstanding 'to-do's for the book, but there is no point writing a book about natural navigation if you are the sort of person who can resist these conditions. Dressed in a suitably ridiculous balaclava I made my way to the foot of Halnaker Hill and then proceeded uphill in wellies. Unless I'm on a mountain I find wellington boots with two pairs of socks the ideal footwear for small excursions in snow, even good hill-walking boots let…
2009-09-26
My thanks to Fred Smith, a retired airline pilot who was on Thursday's course, for sending in this shot of the sunset in Tobago. The photo is taken from 11 degrees north, on 14 September, looking slightly north of west at about 6.30pm.
2009-09-02
Regular blog readers will know that I am a bit of a fan of Robert Pirsig's book, 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. I'm just about to finish the sequel, 'Lila', which is also a bit of a positive mind-bender (that is if you have some alternative views, and possibly a negative one if you consider yourself a conformist. Come to think of it, a conformist wouldn't buy the book, and if they stumbled across it would be unlikely to start it and if they did start it, would be extremely unlikely to finish it.)Pirsig takes on…
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…
2008-09-08
This is a picture I took about half an hour ago and it is one of those that might be dismissed by those not trained in the dark arts as a 'typical English country scene'. With closer inspection it yields navigational fruit aplenty.
The foreground shadow confirms that the sun is no longer visible from this viewpoint, but the direction of the early evening sun is easy to detect from the long shadows in the middle ground. We are therefore looking south.
The smoke from the two fires reveals that the wind is light and variable. In…
