The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Sticking with a midsummer theme for another day, I came across this picture today. It was taken in a place called Uttakleiv in northern Norway. The time lapse shows how the sun does get lower, the angle being directly related to the latitude, but at this high latitude even its lowest point is not below the horizon. I was fortunate enough to witness the midnight sun in Kiruna in north Sweden a few years ago, but my photos were a lot less dramatic than this. Something to do with the fact I had flown about ten hours that day in a tiny aircraft. That and the fact that I am not a very good photographer.

Happy Summer Solstice everyone. Sunrise and sunset will be closer to north than east or west at this time of year for most of Scotland.

This photo is taken looking southeast. The setting sunlight can be seen bouncing off the northwestern edges of the clouds.

I watched the History Channel’s ‘Expedition: Africa’ last night, a retake on Stanley’s expedition to find Livingstone. It is quite enjoyable if a bit ‘light’, the interest certainly coming from the internal politics of the expedition team rather than the nature of the journey itself. One thing did strike me, one of their challenges is billed as ‘using only compasses and basic maps’, which could only be billed as a challenge in the age of satellite navigation. Even this seemed to rob the team of some of their awareness of their surroundings. Pasquale Scaturro, the navigator, takes a compass bearing and then navigates from ‘tree to tree’ despite numerous clues in the sky and ground to help him hold a course. To be fair Benedict Allen does point out that the river would give a line to follow, but Pasquale does not seem to want the river to get between…

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I really enjoyed this article on the BBC website, lamenting the ‘hollow preparation’ currently needed for A levels. They don’t make them like they used to!

It refers to a Reform group report that claims no ‘independent study’ or ‘original thought’ is required for the exams,  and likens them to sat-nav as opposed to map-reading. By extrapolation, natural navigation must only be for the most original and indendent of thinkers!

I took this picture a week ago. It shows the lower fair-weather cumulus clouds against the upper cirrus clouds. It is not at all unusual to watch the lower clouds and upper clouds move in different directions and to feel a third wind direction on your face at the same time.

I have been writing about the wind recently and thought I would share a favourite building that I am always reminded of when thinking of the wind. The Tower of the Winds was built in Athens in the first century BC by Andronicus of Cyrrhus. It has eight faces, each one with a frieze representing the wind that blows from that direction, from Boreas in the north, through Notus in the south and back. It has a sundial on the outside and used to contain a water clock within it. Time, sun, wind and water all brought together in a building that stands, and it still stands, 13m high and 8m wide.

The two pictures above show two sides of the same bridleway signpost on the South Downs Way. The arrows both point east and there is a clue to this in the photos. It is not in the lichen growth, which unusually is quite similar on both sides, but in the colour of the arrows themselves. The blue of the south-facing (but east-pointing!) arrow has been bleached more by the sun. The three main weathering clues are sun, wind and rain. The first will usually be greatest on the southern side, but wind and rain will usually leave their marks more prominently on the southwestern side.

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 shades, where the groyne can be seen underwater and the thin shadow of the pier itself and finally the thin white strips where the tiny waves are breaking.

I’ve just been researching the Transylvanian Effect. That is the supposed link between the moon’s phases and deviant behaviour, psychiatric problems, crime etc. Did you know that Sussex police deliberately deployed more officers during nights with full moons in summer 2007?

Tristan


I managed to rope in a friend at the end of an evening’s BBQ and together we plumb-bobbed Polaris, set out two posts and then strung a string between them. We checked with a compass and, despite the evening’s beers, we were actually almost spot on!

The next day we checked the shadow at 1.00 (12 noon GMT) and found this lined up on our string. Impressed or what!

Richard

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Hi Richard,

I can see I’m going to need to come up with some sort of merit/badge/star system just to complete the back to school experience!

A link that I will have mentioned on the day is here:

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/AltAz.php

If you plug in your latitude and longitude, it will give you the altitude and azimuth of the sun (or moon) for a whole day by GMT. Due south is often very close to clock midday, but it can wander off it depending on your longitude and because of something called…

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