We are moving toward winter. It did not seem that long ago that our field was green and full of life. The golden rod is now dry and brown. Click on the image for a larger view.
Tag Archives: Nature
Late Autumn 2015
Beach, which never drop their leaves for winter, and oak are the last of the trees with foliage in our forest. Click on the image for a larger view.
Trees, Wind, and Light
The foliage is changing quickly in our forest. Click on the image for a larger view.
Red Maple Spectrum
Inspired by my maple leaves, this images represents the spectrum of the Red Maple tree. These colors can be present at one time throughout the foliage. Click on the image for a larger view.
Fall 2015
These leaves are from a single red maple tree in our garden—all taken at the same time. This tree is usually one of the first to show its fall foliage. Click on the image for a larger view. If you would like to see the tree… Continue reading
Moon and Stars
The only time the moon can be seen against the faint background of stars is during a lunar eclipse—the glare of a full moon washes out all but the brightest stars and a new moon sets before the sun goes down. This was our view through the canopy of our forest. Click on the image for a larger view.
A Disappearing Moon
Last night, the moon slipped into the shadow of the Earth. It took about an hour to hide our satellite, which spent another forty five minutes in the shade of our planet before slowly emerging into the light of the sun. Click on the image for a larger view.
NOTE: if you know how to cross your eye to fuse stereo pairs, this image is quite dimensional.
More than Meets the Eye
Cameras imitate human vision. Color is purely a human response to light: it does not actually exist in nature. How far we see in the electromagnetic spectrum, we call that range light, is simply a response of our biology.
But eyes are not simply tiny cameras. Our vision is a complex system. Part of the retina of our eyes (rods) only sees luminance—how bright things are. Part (cones) only sees color, or, maybe more accurately, differences in color. These signals are transmitted to our brain where it recreates an image of the world. But even in our brain, luminance and color are processed in entirely different areas. So while our experience is a unified vision of a color world (the middle image), the reality is part of our brain is processing luminance (the left image) and another part color (the right image).
We are really not that good at seeing color, which is a late evolutionary adaptation (many animals do not see in color). But it is important. The sky is rather dull in simple luminance—the orange sky at the horizon has the same brightness, or equiluminant, as the blue sky through the cloud. The addition of color in our perception creates far more separation. But color alone lacks structure and detail—color acuity is low in human vision, which why it can be really hard to read red text on a green background when both colors are equiluminant. Click on the image for a larger view.
Dusk at Pemaquid Point
The metamorphic rock at Pemaquid Point slowly being eroded into the Gulf of Maine. Before it was turned to gneiss underground 400 million years ago, it was itself a product of erosion as sedimentary rock. Click on the image for a larger view.
Garden Mystery
We have a mystery growing in our garden. We did not plant this squash or pumpkin or whatever it is. Most likely it is from the seed of a hybrid squash we planted the year before, but is not growing to type. It is big and looks healthy. Not right to harvest, but when it ripens, we will certainly take a closer look. Click on the image for a larger view.
