A Perseid meteor streaks over Yosemite National Park. Photo by Wally Pacholka/Astropics

This weekend marks the end of July and the beginning of August as summer has crested the top of the roller coaster and now is plummeting wildly toward the end. But there is still a lot to see in summer skies, and the first two weeks of August are packed with planetary viewing.

The action begins this weekend in the west after sunset when Saturn and Mars lie only two degrees apart on from July 30 to August 1. Find Mars on the left and Saturn on the right. Venus is just below the pair and the three will become an official trio on August 7 and 8 when they all appear less than five degrees apart. Following this meeting, Saturn will sink toward the horizon as Venus and Mars drift closer together and then meet up with the star Spica at the end of the month.

To learn when the crescent moon joins the view and where to spot nearby Mercury, click here.

The best meteor shower of the summer, and one of the best of 2010, occurs from the evening of August 12 into the early morning hours of August 13. A new moon will occur a few days before the Perseids, on August 10, which means the slim crescent moon on August 12 will set early and leave the skies nice and dark for catching all of the fleeting Perseid meteors.

The Perseid meteor shower gets its name from the constellation Perseus, where the meteors appear to emanate from. Perseus rises in the northeast a bit before midnight on August 12, although meteors from this shower are active from July 25 to August 18. The August 12 date is simply your best odds for seeing the most meteors. Lucky observers can see up to 80 meteors per hour at maximum. The bits of rock and dust that create this meteor shower are from the debris leftover by Comet Swift-Tuttle.

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Ansel Adams. Photo by Cedric Wright; courtesy Colby Library, Sierra Club.

Talk about a gold mine. A California man recently discovered he possessed a treasure trove of Ansel Adams negatives that an art appraiser valued at more than $200 million, according to CNN. The negatives were believed to have been destroyed in a 1937 darkroom fire. But 10 years ago, they were purchased by Rick Norsigian of Fresno at a garage sale for $45. Experts and historians seem to corroborate his claim. However, there are those who doubt the authenticity, including Adams's own grandson.

"Mr. Norsigian has been claiming these negatives were made by Ansel Adams for many years," he said. "I am unaware of anyone knowledgeable agreeing with him."

About eight times a year, the Ansel Adams Gallery hears from people wondering if an image in their possession could be a long-lost piece of Adams' artwork, said Dustin Nelson, staff photographer at the Yosemite National Park gallery.

"Now and again we receive phone calls from people who say, 'I found a print in a yard sale for $10 — that kind of thing," Nelson said.

Whether the negatives are authentic or not, such arguments reflect the photographer's lasting legacy. After first visiting Yosemite as a teenager, he became intimately involved with the Sierra Club for much of his life. Read more about him by clicking here.

Brilliant sunshine changes our perception of colors. Below 35 degrees north--say in Honolulu, Key West, or Los Angeles--the saturated colors of a Hawaiian shirt don't wash out in the brilliant light. Up at Acadia National Park in Maine (44 degrees north) the light is cooler and dimmer, even at noon, and wearing the same shirt will make you look like a peacock in a parking lot.

Beach scenes in Boston cry out for French ultramarine, that cool, grayish-blue, in both the sea and sky. But in Honolulu, everything is yellower, and only cobalt teal will do for the sea.

Cerulean, French ultramarine, pthalo, cobalt....when you go on vacation intending to paint landscapes, you need the right blue. Below, French ultramarine is second from the left. Cobalt teal runs along the bottom of the card.

So, how does this affect me? I'm going up to Boston, so I'll need the French ultramarine and the cerulean. Every year I make big plans to paint; once I even lugged up a gallon can of latex house paint, thinking I'd finish several 18 x 24 paintings! Last year I realized that I'd rather make many small sketches on postcard-sized paper than focus on a few large paintings. When I'm on vacation, I want to draw. Last summer, I stored the little drawings in a pint berry box and it became my summer sketchbook. Next week I hope to have some sketches to show you.

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Sue Fierston paints and teaches just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. As a painter, she works in acrylics and watercolor and is in the middle of a series called "100 Flowers." As a teaching artist, she works with teachers to bring art into their classrooms in grades 4-8. Her posts focus on her nature-themed art collaborations. For a look at her paintings or more about her teaching, check out her website atsuzannefierston.com.

A long-exposure photograph captures the cross shape of Cygnus as it floats in front of the Milky Way. Image credit: John Chumack

The constellation Cygnus is an easy target for summer observing. The constellation is named for a swan of Greek mythology, but its shape may be more identifiable by its nickname, the Northern Cross. The brightest star in the constellation is Deneb, one of the three points in the Summer Triangle. Look for it in the east, high above the horizon after darkness falls.

If Deneb is the top of the Northern Cross, then Albireo is the base. Albireo is famous as being the most colorful binary star system in the heavens. The colors are easy to spot through even the smallest telescope. Optical aid will show the yellow member as the brighter of the two in Albireo with a pretty blue companion beside it. This double star system lies 380 light-years away.

Two well-known nebulas (clouds of gas and dust) can be found within Cygnus. A little over three degrees east of Deneb is NGC 7000, the North America Nebula. This large nebula shows up easily as the reddish patch (with a hook for Maine) seen in the photo here. It spans four moon-widths across, which means you can catch it in binoculars from a non-light-polluted area. But because it is dim with its light spread out across a wide area, the nebula can still be quite a trick to nab. Beginners should remember they are not looking for a bright, red object that cameras capture, but a hazy wisp among the stars.

The second nebula to target in Cygnus is the Veil Nebula, NGC 6992. The Veil Nebula is another large span of gas and dust that can be found just south of Epsilon Cygni, the eastern star in the cross’s arm. A supernova exploded in this region thousands of years ago, and the expanding shockwave has created the arcing shape of the Veil Nebula. The image here shows the Veil Nebula as the tiny red frown to the left of Epsilon Cygni. Other nebulae nearby are also remains of the exploded star, and the entire area taken together is called the Cygnus Loop. Just as with the North America Nebula, the Veil Nebula can be seen with binoculars under truly dark skies. Look for a ghostly slash curving amongst the stars.

These elusive nebulae are perfect binocular targets for backcountry camping trips.

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Similar to the Sierra Club's partnership with sports figures that highlights the Gulf disaster, First Lady Michelle Obama teamed with baseball stars this week to talk about her "Let's Move" initiative to combat childhood obesity through activity. It's a campaign the Sierra Club is proud to be a part of and it's one element of the Club's larger commitment to getting kids outside. It's an attempt to promote not just healthy kids but healthy parks and outdoor areas for future generations.

The Club is taking part in several partnerships to get its message across. The Club is part of the Outdoor Alliance for Kids (OAK), a multi-sector coalition with a basic objective of getting families and children outside together. The Alliance is pushing for enabling legislation at the national and local levels, such as America's Great Outdoors Initiative.

Organizations such as Outdoor Nation and Natural Leaders Network have also been instrumental allies. Sierra Club partnered with the recent Outdoor Nation Youth Festival and Summit to convene more than 500 young delegates from all 50 states -- of which over 40 were Sierra Club-sponsored youth.

The Club is also focused on inner city youth who are in a particular disadvantage when it comes to outdoor access to nature. The Inner City Outings (ICO) program organizes more than 800 outings involving about 14,000 kids. Click here to access the Club's brochure and detailed summary of the 50 ICO’s that are led by volunteers across the country.

In addition to promoting the outdoors, the first lady's campaign urges healthy eating for our youth. The Sierra Club has that front covered as well. Watch our video series featuring green cooking expert Annie Somerville. And take a look at this gallery of the unhealthy kids meals at restaurant chains. The calories and sodium data will shock you.

White is the one color watercolor painters don't have on their palettes. To make white highlights in an object, we scratch the painted paper back to its original white. Sometimes we use a bit of opaque Chinese white or white gouache. I've been known to use White Out in a pinch. Right now, though, the Shasta daisies are in bloom, and they are white as teeth. In our humid Maryland summers, only one daisy is perennial: Chrysanthemum x superbum 'Becky', and I can't resist painting it.

The trick to painting white flowers on white paper (my paper is really a pale green here) is to paint around them. I contour drew the flowers first. Then I used a combination of cobalt and manganese blue to paint around the flower petals. In some areas I left the background unpainted because I didn't want the sketch to look like a coloring book with each little petal perfectly outlined in blue. It is hard to know when to stop, though.

In the monoprint below, I left a few of the Japanese maple leaves un-inked--they pop out against the reddish leaves and the blue background. I painted printing ink onto the leaves, ruler and squiggly shape first, then I arranged the shapes, laid damp white paper on top of them, and ran the paper through a table-top printing press.

In this image, the cluster of stars that make up the coat hanger appears upside down. Image credit: John Chumack

The Summer Triangle is a rather easy asterism for beginners to locate, and each of the stars with their associated constellations (Vega in Lyra, Deneb in Cygnus, and Altair in Aquila) are good observing targets in their own right. But two other constellations lie within the summer triangle and are home to three gems of the night sky.

The constellations of Vulpecula the Fox and Sagitta the Arrow reside within the triangle of the three bright stars that lie between the eastern horizon and the zenith on summer nights. (Follow this link for help on finding the Summer Triangle.) Within these two constellations is a globular cluster visible through binoculars, one of the most famous planetary nebulae in the sky, and a cluster of stars that appears to form the shape of a coat hanger.

The coat hanger cluster lies in Vulpecula. As seen in the photograph above, the cluster has a long flat base of stars and then a triangle and a hook shape to complete the coat hanger appearance. Telescopes invert the view, making the coat hanger look more right-side-up. The coat hanger cluster is most easily found with binoculars, allowing a wide field of view but still easily capturing stars with magnitudes ranging from 5.1 to 6.8. The closest star lies more than 200 light-years away. A tighter grouping of stars, the cluster NGC6802 at magnitude 8.8, can be found on one end of the coat hanger. (In the image here, NGC6802 is on the left.)

Another target in Vulpecula is the Dumbbell Nebula, M27. At magnitude 8.1, the Dumbbell Nebula is seen at a distance of 1,360 light-years. The central star is now a white dwarf that ejected a cloud of gas as it reached the end of its life. Look for two lobes that mark the brighter portions of the ejecta and give the nebula its name.

A bit farther to the southeast, crossing the border into the constellation Sagitta, is the globular cluster M71. Of the three targets examined here, M71 is the farthest from Earth, at about 13,000 light-years distant. The globular cluster is a smaller and looser grouping compared to typical globular clusters that are orbiting our Milky Way. Without a dense core, M71 looks more like an open cluster than a globular cluster.

The Milky Way is the backdrop for all three of these objects, along with the five constellations mentioned above. Take some time to lie back in a lawn chair with binoculars and see what other gems are hiding within our galaxy.

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Almost any turn of the kaleidascope of nature may set up in the artist a detached and esthetic vision, and, as he contemplates the particular field of vision, the (esthetically) chaotic and accidental contemplation of forms and colours begins to crystallize into a harmony; and, as this harmony becomes clear to the artist, his actual vision becomes distorted by the emphasis of the rhythm that is set up within him.

--John Dewey, quoting Roger Fry, in Art as Experience

I think this is as good an entry into Whitman as any, and, for me, Walt needs some kind of entry point. Launching into the tomb that is Leaves of Grass is dizzying, and I need to be reminded that chaos, distortion, accidental contemplation are part and parcel of the poetic experience.

The 1008-page Norton Critical Edition survives, waterlogged and dog-eared, on the bottom of the bookshelf, where books that all self-respecting poets, have but rarely have the guts to open, are kept. It feels like an indulgence, a long enough journey to require water and snacks, to sit down with the thing on my lap, intending to read and return the better for having done so.

But here is Whitman at his best--out in the natural world, the "harmony becomes clear" :

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I'm fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.

He is driven by a strong sense of belonging and, out of that, a heightened sense of duty--to go beyond what binds and falsely defines him. Maintaining his ties to the community of human beings by returning with something that has been lost.

As the editors note in the Introduction, "...It is important to emphasize that Walt Whitman knew what he was doing and that, when all is said and done--like every artist who achieves something, Walt Whitman ruminated, twisted, lived, willed his something...."

"Loos'd of all limits and imaginary lines," Whitman's "something," the rhythm that he finds at work in the world, "distorts" his vision in ways that become clear in his poetic acts. He "knows" what he is doing only in that he allows this distortion to take place. He willingly accepts his re-birth, wholeheartedly.

Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes
it out of the soul.

What Whitman brings back is something he knows is foreign. "I will be honest with you," he warns, "I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes."

But it is his base delight at having been released from the old way of seeing that gives integrity to the relentless stream of consciousness that connects a child's question, "What is the grass?" to Whitman's simple, indulgent answer, "I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green / stuff woven."

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J Gould has been exploring wild places and writing about them since age 6. He was one of the first "beach-watchers" and newsletter editors for NOAA out at Point Reyes National Seashore. He reads sporadically across the spectrum of poetry and poetics, without any discernible pattern, and toils in virtual anonymity as a poet with annual chapbooks and publications in obscure journals -- the first being Toyon at Humboldt State, where he taught and earned an MA in English. Friend J Gould here, and join the Poetry and Nature group to meet others who share your interest.

Spatter printing uses tiny drops of paint--from a toothbrush or a spray bottle--to create the outline of an image on paper. J.E. Parritt, in his 1879 manuscript Imprints from Nature, used spatter printing to make prints of ferns and a yew branch.

Parritt left no details on how he created his prints, 87 in all. His manuscript appears in Propagating Eden through July 25 at the Wave Hill Glyndor Galley in the Bronx.

What I love about his work is his technique for creating depth. In the picture above, it seems that he began by laying an oval mat over a blank sheet of paper. Next, he laid one branch down on the blank paper, inside the mat, and lightly spattered around the branch. When the paint dried, he lifted the first branch and put down the next right on top of the first image, and so on, always using a light application of spray to keep the leaf outlines visible.

One hundred and thirty years later, I decided to try this process myself, using a toothbrush and a spray bottle for the spattering.

I used acrylic paint and mixed it with water until it was the consistency of heavy cream. For this print, I chose graphite gray and quinacrdone violet paint. Next, I chose leaves with lots of surface area so they would make a clear shape on the paper. But, for design, I added a thin, upright stem. I wasn't sure how it would print.

I used the toothbrush to spatter until my fingers tired; I dipped it into the liquid paint, shook off the big drops, and ran my finger over the bristles. Paint flew everywhere until I learned to control the direction of the spray by aiming the brush. I switched to the spray bottle, thinking it would produce a fine mist with less effort. It didn't, although a professional spray gun would have. My bottle clogged many times (acrylic paint is known for this!) and I quickly returned to the toothbrush.

On the right you can see the hazy outline of the second strawberry leaf. I spattered around the leaf on the left and the stem, let the paper dry, and only then put down the leaf on the right. Below is a second print that I did using only a toothbrush.

If you'd like to use flower stencils without the spattering, check out the "We Love Nature" font at MyFonts.com (see below). It is a picture font that types leaf and flower outlines in place of keyboard letters. Designed by Nicole and Petra Kapitza in their East End London studio, it is one of 17 picture and pattern fonts they have designed for MyFonts.com.

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Sue Fierston paints and teaches just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. As a painter, she works in acrylics and watercolor and is in the middle of a series called "100 Flowers." As a teaching artist, she works with teachers to bring art into their classrooms in grades 4-8. Her posts focus on her nature-themed art collaborations. For a look at her paintings or more about her teaching, check out her website at suzannefierston.com.

This total solar eclipse occurred over Ghana in 2006. Image credit: Roger Stoll

A new moon this weekend means that skies will be nice and dark for some good summertime observing. Unfortunately, where I live the mosquitoes are scaring all but the most dedicated inside.

One observing target this weekend will be bright enough to view even through the window. Venus, at magnitude -4.08 will lie just a bit more than a degree above Regulus on both July 9 and 10. The close pair will be found near the horizon in the west after sunset. Two other planets are a short distance to the left (south): reddish Mars and yellowish Saturn. My daughter and I braved the mosquitoes last week to catch Saturn in the telescope. Its rings are turned so that they seem to be pointed directly at us, which means we didn’t get a view of the wide expanse of the rings but instead it looked like two thin sticks were jutting out of the top and bottom of the planet.

On Monday, July 12, a young crescent moon can be spotted within a half hour after sunset until it too sets in the west. For the rest of the week the moon’s face will increase as it moves higher in the sky after sunset. On the 13^th the moon is beside Regulus, on the 14^th it’s below Venus, and on the 15^th the 25-percent-lit moon is below Mars and Saturn.

On July 11, a total solar eclipse occurs as the moon passes directly in front of the sun for people located in the South Pacific. Despite the very narrow strip in a quiet patch of Earth that the shadow passes over, there is one well-known spot that will be directly in the path of the total eclipse. Easter Island will enjoy totality from 20:08 UT to 20:13 UT. Expect some beautiful photos to come out of this event!

Read more about summer observing.

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Kelly Kizer Whitt loves clean, clear, and dark skies. Kelly studied English and Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked for Astronomy magazine. She is currently the Feature Writer for Astronomy and Space at Suite101.com. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/Astronomommy

Photo courtesy John Gould.

Under the water tower at the edge of town
A huge Airedale ponders a long ripple
In the grass fields beyond.
Miles off, a whole grove silently
Flies up into the darkness.
One light comes on in the sky,
One lamp on the prairie.

—James Wright, Above the River: the Complete Poems

Wright was as much at home in Ohio as he was making his way as a poet in defiance of the life his father had chosen, the small town, his life’s work at Hazel-Atlas Glass. He saw through part of his life, enough to write from the pauses inherent in its structure.

He wrote about the forgotten people, the ugliness in people, about football and “the sons [who] grow suicidally beautiful / at the beginning of October, / and gallop terribly against each other’s bodies."

But he also wrote about nature, the pastoral, human connection to the natural rhythms of life: one light, one horse, the prairie. He paused long enough in the silence created by this kind of seeing to create poetry that the critics said, “expressed and enacted compassion over the world’s suffering.”

Reading Wright, I have more compassion for the man who worked with these images. A man who was honest and accurate in the images he created. And, one senses, genuinely vulnerable to the sadness and the beauty he encountered.

Mary Oppen, in Meaning A Life: an Autobiography, wrote about the “objectivist” poet’s point of view (in relation to conversations with Louis Zukowski and her husband George Oppen) about the critical attempt to “construct meaning, to construct a method of thought from the imagist intensity of vision.” She quotes from an interview with George in 1969:

If no one were going to challenge me, I would say “a test of truth.” If I had to back it up I’d day anyway, “a test of sincerity—that there is a moment, an actual time, when you believe something to be true, and you construct a meaning from these moments of conviction.

For both Wright and Oppen, these moments often came in the intersection of the human and natural worlds—in the space created there. Something to push off of, in either direction, that gives being dimension. The one more image, the other more object—the distinction is arguably relevant to poetics. It also adds a layer of meaning to the consideration of these two poems:

Arriving in the Country Again (Wright):

The white house is silent.
My friends can’t hear me yet.
The flicker who lives in the bare tree at the field’s edge
Pecks once and is still for a long time.
I stand in the late afternoon.
My face is turned away from the sun.
A horse grazes in my long shadow.

From Latitude, Longitude (Oppen)

climbed up from the road and found
over the flowers at the mountain’s
rough top a bee yellow
and heavy as

pollen in the mountainous
air thin legs crookedly
a-dangle if we could

find all
the gale’s evidence what message
is there for us in these
glassy bottles….

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J Gould has been exploring wild places and writing about them since age 6. He was one of the first "beach-watchers" and newsletter editors for NOAA out at Point Reyes National Seashore. He reads sporadically across the spectrum of poetry and poetics, without any discernible pattern, and toils in virtual anonymity as a poet with annual chapbooks and publications in obscure journals -- the first being Toyon at Humboldt State, where he taught and earned an MA in English. Friend J Gould here, and join the Poetry and Nature group to meet others who share your interest.

Lets get patriotic! The July photo contest proudly opens it's arms today to anything embracing the theme "Freedom". Celebrating the birth of our nation, the month of July traditionally commemorates courage, patriotism, democracy, and liberty. So, what does freedom mean to you?

With all the heat we've had in Maryland, I had to look for a shadier route for my walk. What I found was a two-mile stretch of road lined with sassafras! I love this shrub for its playful leaves: a trident shape, a mitten (usually right-handed), and an oval. It is a native plant and it prefers to grow undisturbed in a damp, edge-of-the-woods spot. It doesn't even like its leaves to be picked! I had picked all three shapes to print when I returned from today's walk, but only the trident survived. On the left is the leaf itself, and on the right is the print I made from the leaf.

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Sue Fierston paints and teaches just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. As a painter, she works in acrylics and watercolor and is in the middle of a series called "100 Flowers." As a teaching artist, she works with teachers to bring art into their classrooms in grades 4-8. Her posts focus on her nature-themed art collaborations. For a look at her paintings or more about her teaching, check out her website at suzannefierston.com.

The summer Milky Way behind Cygnus the Swan with Vega high overhead. Credit: Paolo Gadler

Summer constellations shift into prime viewing territory for the month of July. This weekend, Americans will be flocking to the outdoors at dark as fireworks light the sky in celebration of Independence Day. The moon will not be around after sunset, but here is a rundown of which stars and planets are the easiest to spot this weekend. Observing before and after the fireworks is a great opportunity to point out celestial objects to people (and many children) who are not yet night-sky savvy.

July is always a great month to catch the Milky Way. It lies within the frame of the Summer Triangle, which is in the southeastern sky after sunset. The dusty lane can appear so distinctly in rural areas (think summer camping trips!) that some may even mistake it as a cloud obscuring their view of the sky. The Milky Way looks particularly thick around the southern horizon where the summer zodiacal constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius reside. This region is home to the center of our Milky Way galaxy. If you had x-ray vision, you would see a brilliant source emanating from the galaxy’s core.

Scorpius and Sagittarius are easy constellations to identify. Looking south along the horizon, find a shape that looks a bit like an arrow pointing to your right (for those in the Northern Hemisphere). The line that connects to the arrowhead loops downward and then curls into a tail. This is Scorpius the scorpion. The brighter, reddish star near the head is Antares. To the left of Scorpius is Sagittarius the Archer. But Sagittarius is much easier to see as a teapot. Its spout is closer to Sagittarius while its handle is on the opposite side. Sagittarius is a great constellation to explore with optical aid. It is filled with nebulae, clusters, and other delights because of its location in the direction of the center of the Milky Way.

For all the highlights in the night sky for July, check here.

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Kelly Kizer Whitt loves clean, clear, and dark skies. Kelly studied English and Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked for Astronomy magazine. She is currently the Feature Writer for Astronomy and Space at Suite101.com. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/Astronomommy