The sun is a good
thing for a nature photographer. Just
look at the beautiful shots it creates.
It provides both direct and indirect light for my photography.
It not only provides light but heat as
well. All that heat and light only takes
about eight minutes to travel 93 million miles.
I was going to put that fact into a bite size chunk, like 125 billion
Miller Parks, but seriously how do you make 93 million of anything bite size.
As
I was doing research for this blog I learned that the sun is one large nuclear
reactor. The heat and pressure from the
sun’s core changes hydrogen (74% of the sun) to helium. This creates a constant release of energy in
a process called nuclear fusion. I
wonder if we’ll ever be able to produce energy as efficiently as the sun
does. But that’s a blog for another day.
Length of days is
determined by the earth’s tilt. That 23
½ ° is why we have seasons. So for me in
Wisconsin
summer is created when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun. The earth moves the tilt toward the sun from
the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere. That’s when we here in the North get
fall. Then winter is when the Northern
Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun and spring comes as the earth shifts the
tilt again. Fascinating. I wouldn’t have thought of that.
So the sun is a
good thing for everyone. It provides
light and heat and seasons and beauty.
Very Cool.
Pack out what you
pack in.
Sources:
A Project
Guide to Wind, Weather, and the Atmosphere by Marylou Marano Kjelle, Mitchell
Lane Publishers, Hockessin, Delaware ©2011.
www.mitchelllane.com
13
Planets: The Latest View of the Solar
System, by David A. Aguilar, National Geographic Society, Washington DC, © 2011.
Do you know what the trees
