A very happy Labor Day to everyone! Here’s a photo I originally shared eleven Labor Days ago. The struggle is every bit as real today as it was when Diego Rivera began painting the wall of the DIA’s Garden Court in 1932.
See more in Maia’s Rivera Court, Detroit Institute of Arts gallery & follow her on Flickr for her latest!
I shared this photo waaaaaay back on August 19, 2009! Since my old posts are becoming inaccessible as the modern web leaves them behind, I’m trying to “save” at least one a week. I love Jim’s writings about the photos he takes and thought you would as well. Enjoy!
Fog rolls off of Lake Superior and up the Grand Sable Dunes on the Pictured Rocks Lakeshore as seen from the Log Slide Overlook west of Grand Marais in the Upper Peninsula Of Michigan. The Grand Sable Dunes are located on a five mile stretch between the Sable River and Au Sable Point in Alger County. The banks rise up to 275 feet high, created during the last ice age when sand and gravel filled in a deep rift in the glacier. Atop the gravelly banks, sand dunes rise another 80 feet. These are “perched dunes” because they are perched on top of another landform. They were probably formed when wind and waves piled up sand at the edge of Lake Nipissing, the forerunner of Lake Superior.
Check out Jim’s Pictured Rocks or Lake Superior galleries for much more!
Gabbro Falls by Eric Hackney Photography
I shared this photo way back in 2015 with the comment that in addition to stalking the Petit Portal, it appeared I was stalking Eric Hackney as well. It’s been a minute since I have featured one of his photos, so I thought I would dust this post off & add some of my favorites from Eric that I’ve shared over the years along with still timely information about Gabbro Falls from GoWaterfalling:
Gabbro Falls is on the Black River and is as impressive, if not more impressive, than its more celebrated neighbors downstream along the Black River Scenic Byway. This is a largely wild waterfall with no fences or barriers of any kind. It consists of three separate drops. When the water is high there is a fourth drop that is the height of the other three combined. The main drop falls into a narrow crevice between two large rock formations. Gabbro Falls is relatively easy to find but there is some confusing information out there. The waterfall is also known as Baker’s Falls, and it is often mistakenly called Garbo Falls (gabbro is a type of rock). There is also a Neepikon Falls upstream, but it is just an unremarkable rapid.
Read on for tips on visiting and pages about nearby waterfalls on the Black River.
See more from the western edge of the Upper Peninsula in Eric’s 6-27-15: Gogebic County Adventures I album that includes Gabbro Falls, Rainbow Falls, Potawatomi Falls, and Gorge Falls. Definitely follow Eric at Eric on Facebook and view & purchase photos on his website. Click for posts about Upper Hungarian Falls & Slate River Falls by featuring Eric’s pics!
Fawn Finding Forest Fast by Jeff Dehmel
We’ve all heard of f-stops, but look at this fawn f-GO!! I shared this photo eleven Julys ago but wanted to update it with even more Fun Fawn Facts:
More great shots from Jeff in his most popular photos gallery on Flickr!
Schweitzer Falls by Michigan Nut Photography
Every once in a while, I come across a Michigan waterfall I haven’t featured on Michigan in Pictures. Thankfully, GoWaterfalling always has me covered! Their entry for Schweitzer Falls says in part:
Schweitzer Falls is located a few miles south of Palmer Michigan. This is a very wild waterfall, despite being only a few hundred yards from the road. There is no established trail to the falls, and no signs of any human disturbance at falls. Despite that, reaching the waterfall is not particularly difficult.
Schweitzer Falls is a two tiered falls, dropping about 20′ feet in total. The second tier is higher and steeper than the first, and you can get nice and close to it. There was not simple and obvious way to get close to the upper tier. If you are willing to get your feet wet you could probably just wade through the pool at the base of the lower tier and climb the rock to see the upper one.
Head over to GoWaterfalling for directions & check out many more Michigan waterfalls on Michigan in Pictures!
If you’re not following John at Michigan Nut on Facebook what are you even doing?? View & purchase his work at MichiganNutPhotography.com.
On Wednesday, NASA astronaut & Grand Rapids native Christina Koch tweeted the photo above that perfectly captures Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula with the caption “Waving to the mitten! Greetings to my friends and family in Michigan. The Great Lakes are as stunning from space as they are in person.”
Indeed!! While Ms. Koch calls North Carolina home now, we appreciate her appreciation for the state she was born in. Even more appreciated is the work she’s doing in space & the contributions to science she’ll make as the new champion in the “longest single spaceflight by a woman” category. The Verge explains:
Koch launched to the ISS on March 14th, along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. But rather than stay for six months, as most of NASA’s astronauts do, Koch is now slated to remain on the station through February 2020. That means she’ll spend 328 days, or nearly a full year, in orbit, which is one of the longest consecutive stays in space by any NASA astronaut. She’ll just miss beating Scott Kelly’s record of 340 straight days in orbit, the all-time record for a NASA astronaut. But she’ll beat Whitson’s time of 288 consecutive days in space … She’ll just miss beating Scott Kelly’s record of 340 straight days in orbit, the all-time record for a NASA astronaut. But she’ll beat Whitson’s time of 288 consecutive days in space.
The lengthy stay could be helpful for NASA to better understand how long-duration spaceflight affects the human body. While Kelly was in space for his year-long mission, he gave samples of his own blood and did other health analyses so that NASA could see how his body changed while in orbit. The space agency then compared Kelly’s health data to that of his twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, who remained on Earth throughout the full year. The experiment revealed a few surprising ways that space messes with the body, like damaging DNA and affecting cognition. NASA noted that Koch’s flight will also add to this growing area of research.
Read on for more at The Verge including plans for NASA’s first all-female space walk & DEFINITELY check out NASA’s photo gallery for Ms. Koch at work (wowzas) and/or all the photos from Expedition 59.
Sleeping Bear Bay Northern Lights, photo by Kenneth Snyder
Here’s a feature via Leelanau.com…
A Conflagration of Storms from his online book The 23rd Cycle, Dr. Sten Odenwald tells of the evening of March 13, 1989 when a massive wave of solar energy struck our atmosphere, creating one of the most impressive northern lights displays of the modern era.
Alaskan and Scandinavian observers were treated to a spectacular auroral display that night. Intense colors from the rare Great Aurora painted the skies around the world in vivid shapes that moved like legendary dragons. Ghostly celestial armies battled from sunset to midnight. Newspapers that reported this event considered the aurora, itself, to be the most newsworthy aspect of the storm. Seen as far south as Florida and Cuba, the vast majority of people in the Northern Hemisphere had never seen such a spectacle. Some even worried that a nuclear first-strike might be in progress.
Luke Pontin, a charter boat operator in the Florida Keys, described the colors in reddish hues as they reflected from the warm Caribbean waters. In Salt Lake City, Raymond Niesporek nearly lost his fish while starring transfixed at the northern display. He had no idea what it was until he returned home and heard about the rare aurora over Utah from the evening news. Although most of the Midwest was clouded over, in Austin Texas, Meteorologist Rich Knight at KXAN had to deal with hundreds of callers asking about what they were seeing. The first thing on many people’s mind was the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS29) which had been launched on March 13 at 9:57 AM. Had it exploded? Was it coming apart and raining down over the Earth? Millions marveled at the beautiful celestial spectacle, and solar physicists delighted in the new data it brought to them, but many more were not so happy about it.
Silently, the storm had impacted the magnetic field of the Earth and caused a powerful jet stream of current to flow 1000 miles above the ground. Like a drunken serpent, its coils gyrated and swooped downwards in latitude, deep into North America. As midnight came and went, invisible electromagnetic forces were staging their own pitched battle in a vast arena bounded by the sky above and the rocky subterranean reaches of the Earth. A river of charged particles and electrons in the ionosphere flowed from west to east, inducing powerful electrical currents in the ground that surged into many natural nooks and crannies. There, beneath the surface, natural rock resistance murdered them quietly in the night. Nature has its own effective defenses for these currents, but human technology was not so fortunate on this particular night. The currents eventually found harbor in the electrical systems of Great Britain, the United States and Canada.
Read on for much more about how our electrical grid can be brought to its knees by the power behind the beauty of the northern lights and get much more in the 23rd Cycle.
Kenneth took this photo back in July of 2012. See more great pics in his Sleeping Bear Dunes album & also check out many more northern lights photos in the Leelanau.com group on Flickr!
October 8, 2014 Lunar Eclipse, photo by David Marvin
On Sunday night we have a chance to see the last total lunar eclipse until May 26, 2021! EarthSky shares information about viewing the lunar eclipse:
On January 20-21, we’ll have the first full moon of 2019, and the first lunar eclipse of 2019 (and this is an eclipse-heavy year, with three solar and two lunar eclipses). It can be viewed from North and South America, Greenland, Iceland, Europe, northern and western Africa, plus the Arctic region of the globe. More details – and eclipse times for North America, plus links for those elsewhere – below.
The eclipse will happen on the night of the year’s first of three straight full supermoons, meaning the moon will be nearly at its closest to Earth for this January, as the eclipse takes place.
The January 20-21 total eclipse of the moon lasts for somewhat more than one hour. It’s preceded and followed by a partial umbral eclipse, each time persisting for over an hour. The whole umbral eclipse from start to finish has a duration of nearly 3 1/3 hours.
Additionally, a penumbral lunar eclipse takes place before and after the umbral lunar eclipse. However, a penumbral lunar eclipse is so faint that many people won’t even notice it while it is happening. In our post, we only give the times of the moon passing through the Earth’s umbra – dark, cone-shaped shadow.
The lunar disk often exhibits a coppery color during a total lunar eclipse. Although the moon is completely immersed in the Earth’s dark shadow, the Earth’s atmosphere refracts (or bends) sunlight and the longer wavelengths of light (red and orange) pass onward to fall on the moon’s face. The dispersed light from all of the world’s sunrises and sunsets softly illuminates the totally eclipsed moon. Actually, if you were on the moon, looking back on Earth, you’d see a total eclipse of the sun.
They note that the partial umbral eclipse begins at (roughly) 10:34 PM with the total eclipse starting at 11:41 PM. The greatest eclipse is at 12:12 AM with the total eclipse ending at 12:43 AM.
David took this photo in October of 2014. Check it out background bigilicious on Flickr and head over to his Marvin’s Gardens blog for more pics from the eclipse & David!
The Narrows, photo by Mark Smith
“The Narrows” refers to the narrow section between North & South Lake Leelanau between these two joined lakes. The bridge that Mark was standing on yesterday morning to take this stunning photo of the hoarfrost before it burned off was originally constructed in 1864, shortly after the founding of the village of Provemont (now Lake Leelanau) by French Canadian farmers.
We’re looking toward North Lake Leelanau in Mark’s photo. Check it out background bigtacular and follow him on Flickr for more!
PS: This post about hoar frost on Michigan in Pictures has an incredible shot of some willows. The photographer explained:
Hoar Frost (also called radiation frost or hoarfrost or pruina) refers to the white ice crystals, loosely deposited on the ground or exposed objects, that form on cold clear nights when heat is lost into the open sky causing objects to become colder than the surrounding air. A related effect is flood frost or frost pocket which occurs when air cooled by ground-level radiation losses travels downhill to form pockets of very cold air in depressions, valleys, and hollows. Hoar Frost can form in these areas even when the air temperature a few feet above ground is well above freezing. Nonetheless the frost itself will be at or below the freezing temperature of water.
Hoar Frost may have different names depending on where it forms. For example, air hoar is a deposit of hoar frost on objects above the surface, such as tree branches, plant stems, wires; surface hoar is formed by fern-like ice crystals directly deposited on snow, ice or already frozen surfaces; crevasse hoar consists of crystals that form in glacial crevasses where water vapor can accumulate under calm weather conditions; depth hoar refers to cup shaped, faceted crystals formed within dry snow, beneath the surface.
A Long Way Down, photo by Mark Smith
This stunning shot from the Leelanau Conservancy’s Clay Cliffs Natural Area was taken by Mark Smith.
He’s been a big contributor of photos to Michigan in Pictures and we’re wishing him a very happy birthday today and hoping Santa brings him all the photography gear his heart desires!!
See some of Mark’s best on Michigan in Pictures.
Check this out background bigtacular and see tons more shots by Mark on Flickr!
