Winter Sky

26 January 2012
7:24 PM

Sunrise at	9:56 AM	in direction	136°	Southeast
Sunset at	4:11 PM	in direction	224°	Southwest

Duration of day: 6 hours, 14 minutes (6 minutes, 30 seconds longer than yesterday)


Since I drove down to Glennallen, I have been trying to capture the moods of the Interior winter sky.  Not being the most expert digital photographer, the results have not been fantastic, but I keep trying.  Then too, we may be past the point where I will capture rosy hues easily.  The rose and violet colors one so often sees in paintings of Alaska are due to the sun's angle being low on the horizon.  And those colors, they aren't exaggerated.

During much of November, December, and January, the angle of the sun is low enough in the sky that colors look like morning for most of the day.  When I checked the sunrise-sunset times for this blog today, my eye caught the statistic that the sun was at its zenith at 1:03 PM (remember how I said our time zone placed noon an hour before midday in winter) and that it's angle was at 7 degrees above the horizon for Fairbanks.  I have no idea what that means in terms of color dispersion through the atmosphere compared to the winter solstice angle of 2 degrees above the horizon.

Even at summer solstice where the twilight lingers for 3 hours while the sun is below the northern horizon, the sun's zenith is no more than 48.6 degrees above the southern horizon.

Our natural horizon to the south in Fairbanks is the Alaska range.  I assumed the "horizon" was not the natural horizon, but instead 7 degrees as if I were looking out across a flat surface to the curve of the earth.  I emailed my uncle (retired Navy) to be sure, because I could find mention of the ideal horizon, but no specific definition of what that meant.  He sent me this link:  Angle of the Sun.

You see, what I have been trying to bend my mind around is how what I see is related to a measurement.  What constitutes a degree in my visual world?  I don't have an answer for that yet either!

Rosy hues or not, I do have some pictures of the winter sky.  I am going to start with some I took earlier this month.  The sun did not rise above the tree tops at our house, but you could see the sun light touching the tops of them as well as the sun through the birch.  At our house, we have tall spruce to the south east, so these are taken south and south west.  The one below is nice for a few reasons.  It shows the soft, soft blue of the Interior horizon sky and how really bright it is, even if the sun is not high in the sky.

Gold and amber across the tree tops

This next one, taken near the same day, reveals the sun peeping through the trees.

Why our house is desirable in mid winter

Then, I've tried to take shots from campus, but I confess, on the best days for color and sky, I didn't have my camera.  Yet, the sky is always interesting, so I took several over the last few weeks.  Today was fun because when I walked there were snow clouds hanging in over the west, north, and north east, but the south was relatively open.  About an hour or so later, all the sky was clear, and then it clouded up again.

Below are two different days of roughly the same skyline.  They were taken near the same time of day and they do seem to reflect the changing colors as the sun's angle increases.  I am facing south east.  The first was about two weeks ago and the second was today.

Mid January

Late January

The first shows the rose and violet colors of deep winter near the horizon, while in the second, the light is more diffuse and the soft blue extends further up the sky and to the north.  Below is a view to the south, but the sun is not shining directly because the I stood just so the sun was behind the building.  That makes for a chance to take wonderful pictures of the southern sky because there is no glare.

And then, I took two photos of sun dogs.  A sun dog is like a rainbow, but it extends vertically instead of in an arch.  Most times, they show white or golden light.  Sun dogs are a phenomena of the arctic and sub-arctic - again due to the low angle of the sun to the south.  These had tinges of color on them like rainbows.  I don't think my camera caught that very well, but you can see the verticality.

Rainbow Sun Dog

The steam from power plant is on the right edge.  I didn't take time to crop them, and looking at it, I decided to include the next, also taken about mid January.  After all, this is about life in Alaska's Interior and providing power in extreme weather is a part of that.

The university power plant sculpts the skyline

Life is good, isn't it?