The Daily Bucket is a place to note what you are seeing around you: animals, weather, meteorites, climate, soil, plants, waters. Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the phenological patterns that are quietly unwinding around us. To have the Daily Bucket in your Activity Stream, visit Backyard Science’s profile page and click on Follow.
We’ve been getting some clear patches in the sky lately for a change — very welcome after two months of overcast and rain. Sunny today in the Pacific Northwest and below freezing: we are feeling the effects of Arctic air funneling through the Fraser River gap. Northeast wind.
On a recent walk out to a local bluff we enjoyed a beautiful sunset.
On the way home I noted the crescent moon was low in the sky. This conflicts with articles on the internet that say the moon tracks high in the sky in winter and low in summer (for example, curious.astro.cornell.edu/...). I took some photos to prove its position here in December. From my observations, the moon varies its track in the sky throughout the month, usually high in the sky around the full moon. If any readers have an explanation why the moon does not follow the ecliptic like the planets do, I’d be very interested to hear what’s going on. (edit: actually it DOES, see comments near bottom below — thank you, readers! I meant equatorial plane in my original text but what I unintentionally wrote IS what happens, within a small range. That means wherever you see the moon, at night or in the daytime, it’s somewhere in the zodiac path.)
Time for you to share what you’re seeing in your natural neighborhood . . .