Category: Nature

Exploring the Cancer Constellation: A Detailed Guide

Here are labeled photographs, detailing its major elements, and including visual guides for enhanced viewing.

MichaelStephenWills2 Comments

Pam proofed my post, “When the Moon Dined from a Stellar Mangar”and found some improvements, including adding text labels to aid in finding Cancer constellation elements.

Labels!!

You will find I replaced photographs in the original post and well, all the major elements of Cancer are labeled. Here is an explanation of the new elements.

You can now trace the “Y” constellation pattern, with Alpha and Beta Chancri (Latin for “of Cancer”) the two claws and Iota the tail. Both elemetns of Iota, a visual binary star system, are there. They are wonderful viewed with a telescope. Near Alpha is M67 (Messier Object 67), another galactic cluster of gravitationally bound stars. It is quite faint in this photograph.

Click photograph for a higher resolution version
Total Lunar Eclipse and Surrounding Sky with labels for primary element of the Cancer constellation
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Reveal

MichaelStephenWills23 Comments
SONY DSC

The elements come into focus, revealing Ludlowville Falls, near Lansing, New York.  On the eastern side of Cayuga Lake, Salmon Creek plunges 35 feet over this limestone shelf.  Pioneers constructed a grist mill at this site.  

Here we see The Fang hanging over the entrance to The Cave.  There is falling water overall, but especially the center section (can you see it?).  The weight of accumulated ice fractured a portion of the frozen cascade. 

The Cave?

MichaelStephenWills25 Comments
The Object Comes Into View

Flowing water eroded away until this durable limestone strata.  The majority of sedimentary rock is shale, only 6% is limestone.  Throughout the Finger Lakes and elsewhere, this is why when flowing water exposed the edge of a limestone strata, the underlying, soft shales are worn away to reveal a waterfall, ever deepening.  Eventually, the support of the limestone washes away to form this ledge.  Here it is an ephemeral cave behind a curtain of ice.

See “The Fang?” for the first post of this series.

Falling Water

MichaelStephenWills10 Comments
SONY DSC

Amid the crystallized water, super-cooled, flowing water seeps through the structure to fall free.

See “The Fang” for the first post of this series.