Tag: Chapin’s Gully

Christmas Eve Sunrise, Chapins Gully, 7:10:55 AM

Posted on by paultmorrison
About five minutes before sunrise.

How hard is it to know exactly to the second when the sunrise occurs? You would think one click on the internet would do it but a few things make it slightly harder. The calculation has to know exactly where you are on earth. It also needs to know your elevation and the elevation of the horizon. All three are pretty easy here on Cape Ann. You don’t have to be within the foot, just a decent guess.

So if I am standing about 30 feet above the water and the sunrise is on the water, boom, 2/3rds done. Then you go to Sunrise Tools at this website and do some clicking. You can have a free account so once you have your favorite locations saved it’s easy.

Today, the sunrise was at 7:10:55 AM and tomorrow it will be 22 seconds later at 07:11:17 AM. Most internet calculators will round that off so that both happen at 7:11 AM. But if you want to see the green flash in the morning you need precision to the second.

That way I could figure out that my phone died precisely eleven seconds before sunrise.

Sunrise tools

Not sunrise, Sunrise 11/09/2014

Posted on by paultmorrison
streetlight
6:22 AM Sunrise in six minutes.
sunrise
6:28 AM Sunrise in Chapin’s Gully. On a scale of 1 to 10 today’s sunrise was a bit on the drab side but it’s Cape Ann so we grade on a curve and everyone gets an A.

Screw That Rat Punxsutawney

Posted on by paultmorrison

Punxatawney Phil six more weeks of winter blah blah blah if you plan your life around a rat in Pensyltucky I got news for you. The rat is only right 41% of the time since 1987.

02022014sunrise
2/2/2014, 7:09AM iPhone 5s, Chapin’s Gully, Dry Salvages with the Breakwater exposed at low tide showing the Straightsmouth flank if you click in a few times.

Now go outside this lovely morning on Cape Ann and check it out. After a Polar Vortex or three the morning seems balmy. And the sunrise over the Rockport Breakwater was lovely.

Rubber Duck has called it: Winter is over. Let’s start scraping, buy some bottom paint, maybe some deadly dick lures to catch an early mackerel.

Easter Sunday Harlequin Ducks

Posted on by paultmorrison

About eight pair of Harlequin Ducks have been hanging out in Chapin’s Gully for the winter. Here are a few of them on Easter Sunday. They might be here for a few more weeks but they will be gone soon.

harlequins

Where do they go? Not tired of the challenge of waves crashing on the coast for variety they spend the summer swimming in white water streams up in Canada. That’s where they have harlequin sex and hatch the next generation. the name harlequin means a clown, a buffoon. But they seem pretty stately to me and they are monogamous, no clowning around. Earlier in the winter there would be an odd number and chasing each other around asking each other for dates like teenagers but by this time of the year they are all paired up. Dabblers, they dive for a minute at a time or more. Around here I think they are eating the mussels that are packed in attached to the rocks but a crab might get nailed too.

This Morning’s Sunrise: How Not to Shoot Panorama Part II

Posted on by paultmorrison

 

Tide and time wait for no man and that includes the sun. If the webpage says sunrise is 7:00 AM on the dot then you better be out there before that to get the rich colors. I was trotting down the Atlantic Path at 6:59 AM enjoying the sunrise but before I could get the iPhone out BAM!  Still working without a tripod although I did line the horizon up on the panorama arrow onscreen which helped calm down the wavy horizon a bit. More after the break …sunrisepartIII just downloaded some good photos of the Edwardo Coronation Saturday night. Wait for my 2:30 PM regular post time for the shot of Sistah Felicia with tambourine over her head (did the lead singer hand it over voluntarily?) with Ron Gilson cutting a rug on the dance floor swinging a tablecloth over his head. I may be exaggerating but not by much.

 

New iPhone 5 Panorama

Posted on by paultmorrison

Click twice to embiggen: sucker is 9,283 pixels wide.Panorama on the new iPhone 5 is pretty slick. As simple as can be and no waiting. Sometimes it says to slow down as I pan across. Here is one of my first shots. Oh Em Gee! When I pointed the camera directly into the sun I detect a purple haze. Apple is going to die for this!

The pano stitching is pretty good. Handheld and turn the phone. The horizon is a tad ragged on the left hand side but the clarity through out is not too shabby. All three lighthouses , couple of boats, a dog and a duck. I over saturated the colors on a lower resolution and I can do a better job with a smooth sweep with practice. If dogs or people move when you are sweeping they can become quite amusing, scary, and mutated.

I’ll write my review of the iPhone after I use it for a week.
First impressions: I can talk in a monotone robot voice pretty easily so Siri can dictate notes and email. It does pretty well and I think I might use that feature.

The maps app with siri is seriously amazing. I have not driven off a cliff yet. Get in the car and tell Siri to drive to an address and #boom  she is a chatty little thing telling me the way.

Bizarre quirk: We haven’t figured out the command to tell her we have arrived and we would like her to quit the map program. Siri, quit maps, Siri, stop driving, Siri, shut up. None of them worked. Sue finally told her to shut the fsck up and she replied, “that’s not very nice” and quit the app. She is amusing and I hope I do not get locked up when found on a street corner swearing at my phone in one hand with a Rubber Duck in the other.

Click on the pick for the full monty. Stella, Rubber Duck, Chapin’s Gully, Pigeon Cove.

April Fools Sunrise after Spring Fling

Posted on by paultmorrison

This morning’s April Fool’s Day sunrise was at 6:23 AM. The Rockport Breakwater is entirely out of the picture since the sun has moved further north when viewed from Chapin’s Gully.

Click to embiggen: You might think, “hey Paul, time to clean your camera sensor.” But to the left is a lobster boat on the horizon and directly above are two seagulls. To the right is the green can denoting the end of the breakwater (but the breakwater is underwater for quite a distance on the north end), and a stray lobster pot in the foreground streak of light water. No dust motes on me.

This morning’s sunrise from Chapin’s Gully

Posted on by paultmorrison

Click to embiggen. Cloudy at the horizon but the sun looks to be quite a bit to the north of the breakwater. Spring is just around the corner. On February 4 sunrise split the breakwater from this spot. Rained 0.58 inches last night.

Sunrise from Chapin’s Gully

Posted on by paultmorrison

This morning there was a pretty good sundog sun pillar preceding sunrise which split the Rockport Breakwater.

Click the photo for two more shots and larger photos. This shot was taken while standing in front of Chapin’s Rock which is in Chapin’s Gully. I wondered who Chapin was so I looked him up. The Reverend Edwin Hubble Chapin had a cottage on Andrews Point (still there) and “a few rods” away, according to his biography was a gully that the preacher swam in most every afternoon. He died in his Pigeon Cove cottage in 1880 but he was a pretty big deal so back to Brooklyn to his last church for the funeral he went. PT Barnum was a pal and went to the funeral as well as “more preachers than have ever attended one funeral.” A Universalist, he preached in Rockport many times to a packed house.