Down To Earth: Late July 2023

Top to Bottom, It's an Amazing Planet

Finding M81 Galaxy Cluster

OLD STARGAZER—NEW TRICKS

As many hours as I’ve spent scanning the heavens with binoculars (often affixed to a tripod for a steady view) I never had a name for a little fluff of fuzz known as the M81 (or Bode’s) Galaxy. Now I know; and you can see it too, if you can find the Big Dipper.

You really want to know and see more; images and details here.

Bode’s Galaxy is located about 10 degrees northwest of Dubhe in the corner of the Big Dipper‘s bowl.

M81 is a spiral galaxy also known as Bode’s Galaxy. It is located about 10 degrees northwest of Dubhe, the brightest star in the Big Dipper. You can find it by extending an imaginary line from Phecda, another star in the Big Dipper, through Dubhe by about the same distance as that between the two stars.

M81 is visible with binoculars and telescopes and has an apparent magnitude of +6.93. It is one of the closest galaxies to our Milky Way and belongs to the M81 Group, a group of 34 galaxies that includes M82, the Cigar Galaxy4. M82 lies in the same field of view as M81, only 38 arc-minutes away. source

Nearer Home: The Atmospheric Anvil

We didn’t get a drop of rain yesterday—perhaps the hottest day we’ve spent in southwest Virginia since moving here in 1975.

But just before sunset, one rogue cumulonimbus managed to visit Independence, VA—50 air miles to our southwest. We watched from the porch shade as warm air above the storm lifted towards the stratosphere, and spread out against that horizontal ceiling for tens of miles. Later after dark, we could see “heat lightning” indirectly as the storm drifted towards the NC state line.

An anvil cloud is also known as a cumulonimbus incus or a cumulonimbus capillatus with incus¹.

And Really Getting Down to Earth

I have a half dozen pictures from the Mulch Decades of this particular creature that has benefitted hugely from the prevalence of bark mulch that shows up everywhere since maybe the sixties?

It did not take much imagination to give this fungus the common name “Bird’s Nest Fungus.” The “nest” is maybe a quarter inch across. As it opens up (many in this image are still unopened) the “eggs” are visible inside.

Those are actually spore packets called peridioles. They are ejected from the nest by a splash of water—a single drop will do— and can be sent sailing more than a meter. They are sticky and will cling to a grass blade until they dry.

Then they split open and shed their spores to continue the clean-up job of decomposition and the recycling of organic bits into whatever comes next.

Here are “nests” in all stages of maturity, with a few “eggs” already splashed out into the greater world.