Beach Walk and Super Moon

Last night I went on a beach walk with friends, Lois and Jamey.  It was an absolute gorgeous evening -- and there were no bugs!

A few feet more of sand is evident on my favorite beach, located east of Grand Marais.  Once we went down the bluff, we still have to walk east since there is no beach to the west.

Once we walked a quarter mile east, there was even some rock.

Enough rock, that Lois found a nice shadow agate.

 

Believe it or not, the fall colors are already starting -- probably due to the drought.

Jamey up on the bluff being Jamey....

At the bottom of the bluff notice the sedimentary layers that have bands of black sand.

The photos below could be macro shots of sandstone cliffs from out west.

 

 

White pine tree...

Driftwood sculpture...

Looking west toward town....

This mother killdeer bird was trying to keep us away from here nest.

 Heading back....

The sunset, still setting into the fog that is still out over the lake.

Sunday night entertained us with a supermoon. A supermoon is the coincidence of a full moon or a new moon with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, resulting in the largest apparent size of the lunar disk as seen from Earth. The technical name is the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system. The term "supermoon" is not astronomical, but originated in modern astrology. The association of the Moon with both oceanic and crustal tides has led to claims that the supermoon phenomenon may be associated with increased risk of events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but the evidence of such a link is widely held to be unconvincing. 

A supermoon is shown in the above photo in the right image, to show that it is larger than the normal moon's diameter.  The Moon's distance varies each month between approximately 357,000 kilometers (222,000 mi) and 406,000 km (252,000 mi) due to its elliptical orbit around the Earth (distances given are center-to-center).According to NASA, a full moon at perigee is up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than one at its farthest point, or apogee.

I took the pictures below from the sand dunes over Sable Lake.

 

 

 

Cites:
Marcoaliaslama, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermoon#mediaviewer/File:Supermoon_comparison.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermoon

Breakwall Sunset

This past weekend was the music festival in Grand Marais.  I must admit that I did not attend festival.  Friday I went home to make mineral art, Saturday I worked the museum and then spent time with friends, Doug and Susan Moore.  Sunday I made agate plates and worked the museum.   Thanks to Doug and Susan for the great visit, conversations, and meals.

We parked at the end of Coast Guard Point and walked out to the breakwall.  Due to the upwelling of cold water, there is still a lot of fog out over Lake Superior, which affects the color and look of the sunset.

The seagulls and tourists hanging out on the breakwall....

There were also a lot of people hanging out on the beach...

A pontoon boat sped by...

Doug and Susan...

The almost full moon.

Unusual Upwelling in Lake Superior

Anyone who has gone swimming in Lake Superior this summer has noticed how cold the water is.  The main reason is that almost 95 percent of the lake was covered in ice last winter.  The ice continued well into the spring.  At the end of July the situation became worse as winds caused upwelling and shifting of the water along the shorelines.   The water temperatures along coastal regions of Lakes Michigan and Superior dropped up to 30 degree overnight!  According to NOAA, sections of Lake Superior bottomed-out at 38°F, while parts of eastern Lake Michigan hit 41°F. These temperatures are more common in April than the last week in July.

This shifting of water occurred due to upwelling, which occurs when cold waters from the bottom of the lake rises towards the surface.  The strong winds pushed the surface water toward the middle of the lake, causing deeper and colder water to rise to the surface along the shoreline.  In Grand Marais as well in other areas along Lake Superior and Lake Michgan, the rapidly-chilled water created a thick layer of fog where temperatures dropped the most. The cold water cooled the air above it through conduction, dropping the air temperature to its dew point and condensing its water vapor.  This colder water is rather dramatic considering that the average surface water temperature in Lake Michigan at the end of July is around 68°F, and the average temperature for Lake Superior surface water is 60°F. 

The chart below shows the differences over the last few years.  The chart is in Centigrade.  If it was calibrated in Fahrenheit, then the graph lines would be even more dramatic.

Some of the NOAA surface water temperatures are shown in the charts below.  First August 2, 2012.  Most of the temperatures are in the upper 50s and low 60s.

The next map below shows the surface temperatures of Eastern Lake Superior on July 29th of this year.  Near Grand Marais, the temperatures were in the 40s and into the 50s along the Pictured Rocks.

After the upwelling the end of July, the surface water temperatures of a large section of
the center of Lake Superior dropped to  the 30s.

One of the results of this colder water is that there will be less evaporation.  As a result, the level of Lake Superior is expected to rise up to 10 inches.  The lake level is also up due to high snow levels last winter.  As of the end of June, the level of Lake Superior was up five inches in past month and 15 inches in the past year. 

The graphic below shows the dramatic increase of Lake Superior's water level since 1994. Since the low water level in March 2013, Lake Superior has risen 30 inches.

  

Change of subject:  here is the latest agate window that I made.  I have made custom agate windows for people before that have hand-crafted frames with no glass, but this is the first I made for sale in the museum's gift shop.  

CITES:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Lake_Superior_NASA.jpg 

http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/22212-lake-superior-s-frigid-summer-forecast-coldest-surface-water-since-1979

http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/statistic/avg-sst.php?lk=s&yr=0

http://www.mlive.com/weather/index.ssf/2014/08/lake_superior_water_level_now.html

http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/Missions/GreatLakesInformation/GreatLakesWaterLevels/WaterLevelForecast/WeeklyGreatLakesWaterLevels.aspx

http://www.mlive.com/weather/index.ssf/2014/06/great_lakes_water_levels_the_r.html

Rendezvous with a Comet

For the first time mankind will be landing on a comet in the next few months.  The European Space Agency launched Rosetta on March 2, 2004.  The purpose of the mission is to perform a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Until the last few weeks,

astronomers had no idea what the comet looks like.  After a long trip through space, in mid-July the spacecraft got close enough for scientists to get a closer look at the comet and realised that it has a very strange shape.  Rather than it being one comet, it is actually two comets joined together as

an offset binary comet. 

This week Rosetta advanced to less than 4000 kilometres from the comet.  In the next several days, it will fly within 70 kilometres of its surface during its first fly-by.  Since the comet does not have enough gravity to pull Rosetta into orbit, the satellite will spend several weeks flying around the comet in a series of equilateral triangles.  The purpose of these fly-byes is to map the entire surface of the comet, determine how much the comet is out-gassing, and to identify potential landing sites.   The schedule is for Rosetta to fly within a couple of kilometres above the surface on November 11th, before releasing the landing robot, Philae.

Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko is a comet with a current orbital period of 6.45 years and a rotation period of approximately 12.7 hours. The comet will next come to perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on 13 August 2015.  Like all comets, it is named after its discoverers, Klim Ivanovych Churyumov and Svetlana Ivanovna Gerasimenko, who first observed it on photographic plates in 1969.  It is interesting to know that the comet used to be twice the distance from the sun as compared to its current position.  However, in 1959 the comet had a close encounter with Jupiter, which changed its orbit and pushed it closer to the sun.

The size of the comet is only 3.5×4 km (2.2×2.5 mi).  Rosetta has travelled 400 million km to reach the comet, which is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

CITES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyumov%E2%80%93Gerasimenko

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_%28spacecraft%29

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/gallery/Chmielewski-3.jpg

ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – Collage/Processing: Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com

http://www.universetoday.com/113693/rosetta-on-final-approach-to-historic-comet-rendezvous-watch-live-here/

ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM/OSIRIS/MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA Collage/Processing: Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer