A late season storm brought several inches of snow to Flagstaff a few days ago. Our crab apple tree had just burst forth with blossoms earlier in the week. For just a few hours there was a delightful juxtaposition of colorful blossoms and new snow.
Such is spring in northern Arizona. Warm and sunny days with occasional reminders of the departing winter.
Did you get a chance to see the lunar eclipse?
The weather across northern Arizona was excellent with cloudless skies. It was a bit cold, however, with temperatures in Flagstaff falling from the lower 20s at the start to the upper teens at the end.
For a quick review of how a lunar eclipse occurs check out the Wikipedia and the NASA Eclipse sites.
Total Lunar Eclipse from 0445–1038 UTC on 15 April 2014 as seen in northern Arizona. This is a composite of nine images taken approximately at P1, U1, U2, Max Totality, U3, U4, and P4, plus additional images between U1 and U2, and between U3 and U4. The time of each image is given in UTC. The definitions of the P and U numbers are given in the Wikipedia article and also shown below:
The images were taken with a Nikon D700 using various f-stops, ISO settings, and exposure times. A Nikon 80-200mm f/4 lens was used for all images. Although this is a vintage manual focus lens it it produces remarkably sharp images. For a discussion of this lens, check out this site.
Not too far from the highway and only a short walk from a challenging forest service road are some amazing panels of rock art. Welcome to Red Tank Draw.
The draw is a deep wash draining from Rarick Canyon on the Mogollon Rim into Wet Beaver Creek, often carrying cold snow melt in the early spring. But today the flow of water was quiet and gentle. It’s been a warm and dry winter, after all.
From an article in the Red Rock News:
“Petroglyphs are the main attraction but multicolored lichens growing on the sheer rock walls can be found here as well, some forming designs as intriguing as the etchings.”
“As ancient as the rock art, lichens are the unlikely combination of a fungus and an algae (although sometimes a fungus and a cyanobacterium)”
On this warm spring day, we wandered up and down the draw examining numerous panels of rock art. We’ve been here before and knew where to look so we went for our favorites.
This panel is often referred to as the “sabre tooth cat” panel. It looks like a sabre tooth cat but is probably a more common feline predator such as a bobcat.
But the best panel is found on a large sandstone wall that has evidence of geologically recent rockfall. As the sun moves westward and shadows creep across this face the rock art becomes more impressive until, finally, a single spear of light pierces across the rock wall.
With exceptionally clear and dark skies it was a good time to capture an image of the zodiacal light. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about this astronomical phenomenon.
Zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular, diffuse white glow seen in the night sky that appears to extend up from the vicinity of the Sun along the ecliptic or zodiac. It is best seen just after sunset and before sunrise in spring and autumn when the zodiac is at a steep angle to the horizon. Caused by sunlight scattered by space dust in the zodiacal cloud, it is so faint that either moonlight or light pollution renders it invisible.
With no moon and Flagstaff’s dark skies, it’s pretty easy to see the zodiacal light.
And speaking of dark skies, Flagstaff became the World’s First “International Dark Sky City” way back on October 24, 2001. From the Flagstaff Dark Skies site:
In 1958, Flagstaff pioneered the world’s first lighting ordinance designed to preserve the night for astronomy. Since 1958, Flagstaff astronomers have mostly relied on quiet, friendly diplomacy to protect the night sky…
Flagstaff’s dry, clear skies and dark, cloudless nights drew Percival Lowell to town in 1894. The townspeople deeded the eccentric, wealthy Bostoner a pine-clad knoll atop the mesa immediately west of town as an observatory site, and built him a wagon road to reach it. The area became known as Mars Hill because of Lowell’s famous passion for the red planet.
An exposure of 30s, ISO3200, f/4 was enough to bring out the details of the white glow as well as its reflection in the waters of the Kachina Wetlands. At the top of the image is the bright planet Jupiter.
One morning earlier this year bright sunshine followed an overnight snowfall and created an opportunity for interesting photographs. I had been aware of this old gas station on Route 66 in Bellemont, Arizona, for several years and had been looking for the right setup for photographing it. So, shortly after sunrise with long shadows still playing across the landscape and fresh fallen snow I was able to get this image.
For those of you with a sharp eye and great memory, you might recognize this as the gas station that briefly appeared in the movie Easy Rider from 1969. In fact, if you look closely enough at the image, there is a poster from that movie taped to the window of the door.