Celebrating the Sun...

What better way to celebrate the eclipse than to learn more about our star?

Here's an amazing depiction of the sun's magnetic field...

A drawing of the sun's magnetic fields laid over a NASA image of the sun

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/picturing-the-sun-s-magnetic-field

When it got dark and the temperature dropped, we learned today to appreciate all that our star gives us each day.

Thank you to NPR and Huffington Post for this information:

And here's more about the structure of the sun:



from The Sun Today:

http://www.thesuntoday.org/the-sun/solar-structure/

Moon Shadow Is Common

Moon to right above sun at 12 noon, Aug. 21 in Santa Monica (with filter)

Solar eclipses happen about every 18 months, so I couldn't get fired up over this one.

Everybody knows that the moon rotates around Earth.  That means that it passes between Earth and the Sun every month.

Because the moon is so small and 238,900 miles from Earth and doesn't rotate  in the same plane with Earth and Sun, its shadow doesn't always touch Earth, but one out of 18-20 times, the shadow does touch our planet.

Thank you to Sarah Chodosh for explaining this in the journal Popular Science:

http://www.popsci.com/total-eclipses-frequency

Because our planet is so big and much of it is covered by water, any one spot on a continent doesn't move under the moon's shadow that often.

But it's not that big a deal.  

I'm much more interested in the movement of Earth's tectonic plates over millions of years than in the shadow of the moon passing over us today.  





And here's a list of notable eclipses in the 20th Century:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_visible_from_the_United_States

In any case, it's good to look outside the smaller concerns of life on Earth and look instead at movements of the sun, moon, and stars--and the changes in our own planet over millions and billions of years.

Crossing Ice Packs on the Trail

I was trying to get to a beautiful high Alpine valley near Sonora Pass on July 14, but I encountered a gully that contained the remnant ice of many snow slides last winter.

I wasn't brave enough to cross it--I hadn't brought hiking poles and didn't have a companion to call for help in case I slid down the snow.  

I hiked up the side of the hill next to it and found a beautiful meadow of tiny Alpine flowers as well as spectacular views--but I didn't go back down to the trail on the other side of the slide. That would have required me to walk back up on the way back.

But today I feel justified in my decision.  The LA Times reports that all high-altitude hikers in California are having a tough time this summer, especially those doing the 3,000-mile Sierra Highline Trail.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pacific-crest-trail-dangerous-20170802-story.html

The photo of the hiker with poles inching across the snow tells it all.

See also this report on Mono Lake doing well this year, sent by my friend Diane, who researched and gave me instructions to the hike near Sonora Pass.

http://www.monolake.org/today/2017/07/20/mono-lake-rose-a-record-amount-in-june-2017/

Creatures Great and Small

What an amazing story on NPR today about tortoises in the Galapagos Islands!

http://www.radiolab.org/story/galapagos/

There's beauty in the amazing biodiversity and adaptation of creatures to changes in their environment... from finches to tortoises.

In the show there's also humor and sadness--how a few goats brought by pirates grew into hundreds of thousands that ate the food supply of other animals in the islands.

Much food for thought... hallelujah!

Thank you to Radio Lab for this hour-long show.

Snowmelt & Danger on the Pacific Crest, 2017

Amazing snowpack has created record snow melt and flooding in the Sierra Nevada...  I took this photo on July 8, 2017, with these trees at about 10,000 ft. still surrounded by snow.  The scene is about two miles from the Pacific Crest Trail.

For more photos, see:

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-flooding-sierra-nevada-20170714-htmlstory.html



People hiking the Pacific Crest Trail were endangered by higher-than-normal streams to cross.  Two drowned, one slipped to his death on ice, and one probably died from heat or dehydration.

https://www.pcta.org/2017/sadness-deaths-pacific-crest-trail-50680/

Earth Day: Hallelujah!

Right to left: Lizard Head, Gladstone Peak (slightly in foreground), Sheep Mountain (very small) to far left,
all taken from Wilson Peak (foreground) - from the internet, unknown photographer about July 1, near Telluride CO

Earth Day dawns with exquisite beauty, a crescent moon rising close to Venus an hour before the Sun, our life-giving star.

When One River Captures Another...

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, not far from
where river capture occurred 16 million years ago

There's nothing like a glimpse of geologic time to make you whisper or shout "Hallelujah!"

Here's a report by John Schwarz in the New York Times about how a small river in Alaska, the Slims River,  was captured by another river, the Alsek River in four days in 2016, reversing its course.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/science/climate-change-glacier-yukon-river.html?_r=0

Here's another report by Hannah Devlin in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/17/receding-glacier-causes-immense-canadian-river-to-vanish-in-four-days-climate-change


I knew that this had happened to two rivers I love:

• The Gunnison River near Grand Junction, Colorado, was captured by the Colorado River, leaving behind the riverless Unaweep Canyon.
• The Colorado River just east of the Grand Canyon once flowed north into the Great Salt Lake, but about 16 million years ago, the lower and western portion of today's Colorado River captured the upper Colorado River, which with the Little Colorado River had been flowing north.  "...the lower Colorado River captured the ancestral upper Colorado River and the Little Colorado in the vicinity of the present confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers."

But it's shocking to see a river capture occur in a few months in 2017, rather than millions of years ago.

Other strange things that rivers do in Utah:

http://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/why-does-a-river-run-through-it/