New Year’s Day brought some interesting wave clouds to the San Francisco Peaks. I headed west to Brannigan Park to get both good views of the clouds and sunset colors on the peaks. In addition, I shot time-lapse video that shows the amazing motion of the wave cloud above the peaks and the cap cloud that obscures the summit.
Time-lapse video of wave clouds and cap clouds.
The planet Venus has been quickly rising higher in the sky each evening so that it approached Jupiter in a planetary conjunction.
Here are the planets Jupiter and Venus on the evenings of 22 November, 23 November, and 24 November—the evening of closest approach. In this 3-image composite Jupiter is held fixed and the daily motion of Venus is shown relative to the planet Jupiter.
The next image shows the two planets and their reflections in the waters of Lower Lake Mary.
Here is another example of Venus and Jupiter except this was in the morning twilight and the crescent Moon was also present. And then there was this triple planetary conjunction of Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter in 2013.
It was mid-October and that made it a good time to head to southwest Utah for some autumn mountain biking.
We left Flagstaff around 8:30 a.m. and arrived at the Wire Mesa Trailhead on Gooseberry Mesa about 4 hours later. After a quick lunch, we jumped on the Wire Mesa trail. Good news! They are upgrading the parking lot with a fence and possibly other amenities.
This was our first time on Wire Mesa Trail. It’s a nice loop with some great views of Zion National Park and the cliffs of Gooseberry Mesa.
The next day we visited the Gooseberry Mesa trails, starting on Windmill, then North Rim and out to the west end of the mesa. This route wanders between the edge and then through ramps, chutes, small hills, all on a high-traction surface. The geologic name for this rock is Shinarump Conglomerate.
The return to the trail head included a quick jaunt on Yellow Trail. Great fun! We then returned to North Rim and connected with Practice Trail. The photos shown here are very similar to photos taken on earlier trips to this mountain biking area. See, for example, the trip reports for April 2015 and October 2016.
We had planned on a third day of riding but instead opted to do some hiking in Zion National Park.
Nice!
The weather was perfect with clear skies and light winds in northern Arizona to photograph the transit of Mercury across the face of the Sun.
From Wikipedia: “A transit of Mercury takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly (transits) between the Sun and Earth, becoming visible against the solar disk. During a transit, Mercury appears as a tiny black dot moving across the disk of the Sun.”
Mercury is small so it is difficult to photograph a transit without using a telescope or large telephoto lens. I photographed the transit using a (1) full-frame Nikon DSLR and a 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens, and (2) a Panasonic Lumix FZ150 “bridge camera” with a 600mm [equivalent] zoom. The Nikon takes vastly superior images; the Lumix has more zoom. And the better results came from the Lumix.
The photograph above shows the first image taken as the Sun had partially cleared the cliffs. Subsequent images were stacked and aligned on this image so that it shows a sequence of positions during the transit.
The last transit of Mercury was 09 May 2016; the next will be 13 November 2032. The image above is from the 2016 transit.
Transits of Venus are easier to capture because Venus is much larger than Mercury and also closer to Earth. The last two transits of Venus were 05 June 2012 and 08 June 2004. The next transits of Venus will not occur until 10–11 December 2117 and 8 December 2125. Above is an image of the 2012 transit with a bird also “transiting” the sun.
It was a dry summer (driest on record in Flagstaff) and autumn hasn’t been too wet, either. And, yet, the autumn colors have been good. Very good, even, with leaves staying on the trees well into mid- and late October.
In early October, the aspen were changing colors on the north side of the San Francisco Peaks.
A week later, the leaves had already peaked along Waterline Road and were falling from the trees and covering the road.
As a bonus, we stopped to view the tree carvings, known as arborglyphs or dendroglyphs, made by Basque sheepherders.
The forecast calls for several breezy days and this may finally knock the rest of the leaves from the trees and onto the ground.
Bonus: Zion National Park along the swithbacks overlooking Pine Creek.
