Kitchenhenge - Spring 2018

 
I haven't done a spring equinox kitchenhenge since 2011. It's time.

The idea is that I stand on my top kitchen step and catch a picture of sunrise. I've discussed all the variables that make it an in-exact project. But it's fun anyway. Here is today's equinox sunrise at 7:48 this morning (of course that's 6:48 actual sun time).



You may recall that I run a red line through the same tree (if it's ever removed, I'm in trouble!) so you can align things. I took the four years I had, 2009 at the bottom then working up 2010 and 2011, and the big skip to 2018 (too lazy, cloud cover, forgot?), lined them up and sized them about the same.



The sun isn't perfectly aligned in all of them because of all those variables I mentioned, but it's pretty close.

In other news, I spent all day on The ABZ Affair, but it's gone for approval, and cases of the first two books are already on their way to me.

Tomorrow morning is work. After this intense weekend it's going to feel pretty easy. I think I'm going to bed with a book. A book just for fun.

	See Spring 2010 for a list of some of the variables
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White Kitchenhenge

 
Remember kitchenhenge? I haven't done one for a while. It's the tracking of the sun from my kitchen steps. Not much to see today!



Even when the sun almost appeared, the best the sky could do was get pearly. The slight pink line on the far right is the most color the sun offered this morning.



However, yesterday was better.



The day before was better yet! And pretty close to the southernmost point of sun travel.



Link below to pull up previous kitchenhenge with more explanations.

In other news: I did not do much. I cleaned the kitchen before 8 am. Work was stressful, but then I handed out muffins to everyone. Most of them went to all the drivers and carriers. They don't get a lot of perks, and they do get a lot of grief from unhappy people. I think the gesture was appreciated. I can't say that I've done a single productive thing since I got home, not even to read. Mostly, I've sat still and played a game.

However, I do have to do a little more kitchen stuff for the party at work tomorrow. Then bed, I think.

	See Kitchenhenge
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Kitchenhenge- Winter Solstice 2015

 
Since I started this silly idea, I've managed to capture only 9 solstices or equinoxes, and not all of those on the exact day. Yup, we're doing it again. This morning was completely gray, but I was awake at the right time yesterday, and the clouds were cooperative.



I seem to have done better with equinoxes than solstices. Wonder why that is?

For anyone who hasn't seen this series before, the red line is just my imaginary standard point so I can compare one picture to the others. It always goes through that irregular tree. The equinox occurs more where the yellow dotted line is.

It rained most of the day and I went out and did cases anyway because it's the only day I had to do them.

	See Winter Solstice 2014
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Kitchenhenge - Winter Solstice 2014

 
It's been a while since I did kitchenhenge. Since Spring 2011 to be exact. That may be so long ago that I need to explain it again. Basically, it's a chance catch of a lot of improbabilities. For one thing, I have to be up at sunrise. Ugh. It has to be either an equinox or solstice... or pretty close, because the other thing is that there can't be so many clouds that the sunrise is invisible.

Then... I stand on the top step to my kitchen door and take a picture of the sun coming up. Over time I marked one tree as a reference point, and you can see how the sun has moved in relation to a line through that tree.

And since I last did this, they've put up a huge new bin and the space station, er... grain elevator. That changes the way things look a little bit.

The good sunrise was on Dec 20. I had just arrived at the kitchen sink when it happened. I couldn't get the memory card in the camera and get to the step fast enough. Then on the 21, the actual winter solstice, there was complete cloud cover. This morning, well, meh... I even put a yellow arrow to help you find where the sun actually is. But it's south of the grain bin.



This picture is summer solstice 2009. So if you can line up the red lines in your head, you can see how far north the sun is on the first day of summer.



This post took a lot of time because I had to find old pictures that had disappeared from the blog because I used to host my own pictures. I'm slowly working at getting old posts updated so that the pictures show again. It's an annoying and tedious job. Anyway, some of the kitchenhenge posts are fixed.

The sunrise was actually much more noteworthy before the sun appeared.



And for fun... explain this. Every one of the three mornings this week that I was looking at the sunrise, the flock of pigeons that lives near the grain elevator was flying in a circle to the south of the big bin. They would go out and turn and come back and turn over and over and over. I used no commas there, because they didn't use any in their circling.

	See Kitchenhenge Installment 4 for winter solstice 2009
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Not Quite Several Things

 
This is not quite kitchenhenge. I missed the date by a day because of clouds. But it's close.

This is not quite a sun pillar. The "burned-out" blob isn't the sun, which is still below the horizon. I guess it's a sun plinth (on which the pillar would be built?) See link below for a good sun pillar.



This is not quite perfect. Stupid wires. But not bad.



Gray and damp all day today. Way too much to do. But this is all about quality days, so I won't worry about "not quite," I'll just enjoy that it's something.

	See Sun Pillar in Pink See Sun Pillar from 1999
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Catching the Sun- Sort of Kitchenhenge - Spring Equinox 2011

 

It's been a while since we've visited Kitchenhenge. The sun may always be there, but the clouds don't cooperate very well. I rarely manage to get a picture on the actual mornings of the solstices or equinoxes. This year was no exception; so I bring you the sunrise of March 19.



Remember that the red line is just to help you line up the pictures. It always goes through the same tree. The next picture is last spring, taken on March 18



In 2009, I was a few days later, March 23, and the sun was higher too. It angles off toward the right as it rises.



And now it's another March 23, but there's no sun here... everything is buried in white again. I guessing you don't want to see that right now. So, I'm glad that I captured that elusive sun the other morning. I carried its joy and warmth with me all day.



But, don't worry. I remembered to put it back in the evening.

See Kitchenhenge- Spring Equinox 2010

Sunrise, Super Harvest Moon

 



This is a variation of Kitchenhenge, but today, the first day of fall, has something else really interesting going on.

It's called a Super Harvest Moon, when the full moon of September also falls on the Autumnal Equinox. It hasn't happened since Sept 23, 1991, and won't occur again until 2029!

As if that wasn't enough, there is a rare conjuction of the planet Jupiter with the moon. I'm not set up for night photography, at all. But I went to those kitchen steps. The time was 94 minutes before the official equinox. If I had remembered I would have tried to get an earlier picture with the big orange moon. But then I would have missed Jupiter. It's the brighter of the two dots below the moon. I have no idea what other star the camera picked up. But I'm just happy to have caught these two events.

See Kitchenhenge- Spring Equinox 2010

Kitchenhenge- Spring Equinox 2010

 



Welcome to Spring! We didn't get more than a dusting of snow, but the temperature cooled down a lot. It was cloudy this morning, but I took a picture of the sunrise on Thursday, suspecting that there might be a bit of a problem with today.

Despite my efforts to be consistent with these pictures, I zoomed this one a bit. Also, I've learned that as the sun rises it doesn't ascend perpendicular to the horizon but drifts off to the south.

Variables are: the zoom of the camera, the time of the picture relative to official sunrise time, the exact location where I was standing, the exact angle at which I pointed the camera, not to mention that when it is cloudy I cheat by a day or two. That is WAY too many to be scientific. Still, I manipulated these to make the two trees about the same size in each picture from the last four equinoxes.

You can see that as the sun gets higher it moves to the south. I think I am going to try to take a series on one day to show that track. Don't hold your breath! It will need a clear morning that I am both up in time and remember. But it's an interesting project.

See Kitchenhenge- Winter 2009 See Kitchenhenge- Fall 2009

Kitchenhenge - Installment 4

 




Hi everyone! We just got home from the airport and I'm pooped. But the sun did peek out this morning, so finally, we have the winter solstice only one day off instead of nearly a month. The top panorama is this morning, and the bottom picture is the summer solstice this year. Remember, the red line is just to use to line up the pictures- it always goes through the same tree.

So now you can see the north-south extent of the sun's path here in my kingdom.

Gotta go to bed. I'll answer all your great comments tomorrow.

See Kitchenhenge - Installment 3 See Kitchenhenge - Installment 2

Kitchenhenge - Installment 3

Still cloudy in the morning. I did manage to dry laundry outside, but couldn't see the sun at sunrise. But it was my last chance to get a pix even close to the equinox, so I took it.

As a reminder, these are pictures taken from my kitchen step at or soon after sunrise. I try to take them on the solstices and equinoxes, but what with clouds and my affinity for midnight rather than dawn... let's just say that one should never try to make a calendar from my findings.

Anyway, this time I thought that I would shrink the previous pix and stack them with the red line, which is just for orientation... it goes through the same tree in each one. The dates are: top to bottom, Sep 24, 2009, Jun 24, 2009, Mar 23, 2009, Feb 17, 2009 (not even close to the winter solstice), and a year ago... Sep 21, 2008.

Now you can easily see how the sun wanders north and south from where it rises on the equinoxes.



So, I'm off in the morning. Couldn't get a contest together for this month. Couldn't get any posts done ahead. I'm really hopeful that I'll be able to post from the hike a few time. For some good reason, views on this blog have increased since I came home from the Minnesota hikes, so I am really sorry that the regular posts will be on hiatus so soon again. Thanks so much, everyone!

See Kitchenhenge- Installment 2

Kitchenhenge - Installment 2

Here is the summer solstice (missed by a couple of days) picture from my top outside kitchen step. You may recall that I'm trying to document the movement of the sun through the year from a familiar vantage point.

June 23, 2009, Summer Solstice


March 23, 2009, Spring Equinox


September 21, 2008, Autumn Equinox


Remember that the red line is only to help you identify the same tree from picture to picture to make it easier to see how much the sunrise spot has moved.

See Kitchenhenge - Installment 1

KitchenHenge - Installment 1

 
This is a poor beginning at a project I've wanted to do for a long time. I love to watch the sun move from north to south and back as the seasons change. I've been trying to document the sunrises on the solstices and equinoxes. I was going to show you the winter 2008 solstice (but I've apparently deleted that picture sigh), with the spring 2009 equinox.

This is all complicated by the gray sky we so often have in the winter when we never see the sun, and probably more significantly, by the fact that morning and I are NOT friends.

So what you are going to see is autumn 2008 equinox, a February 2009 sunrise, and a couple days after the spring 2009 equinox. I've put a red line through the same tree in each picture so you can get oriented and see how the sun has moved. One thing I think is really interesting is that the two equinoxes don't have the sun in the exact same place. Is that because the sun was higher in the sky in the February picture? If it's because I missed the actual date by a couple of days then the sun should have been farther to the left (north).

I can see why the ancients became fascinated with this stuff.

Oh, and KitchenHenge? That's because my rule is that I stand on the top outside kitchen step to take the picture. I'll try to continue the collection with a bit more diligence, and consistency of zoom, etc.

September 21, 2008


February 17, 2009


March 23, 2009

	See Trail Work Day
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