The lonely pine cone

Finally some starry skies! Orion is beautifully high in the sky with the bright planet Jupiter to its left. Took a walk in the woods and saw this pine cone lying on the ground. Took a close-up of it and the starry sky. The pine cone is the spruce's equivalent of a flower. It acts as a protection for the tree's seeds and reacts to humidity by opening when dry and closing when wet.

Quick facts:

Seed bank: A single pine cone can contain up to 200 seeds.

Maturation: The cones mature during their first autumn and release the seeds during sunny spring and winter days.

Who eats them? Squirrels often gnaw them clean, while woodpeckers wedge them into the bark to get to the seeds.

Cone year: The spruce produces abundant cones about every five to seven years, which is called a cone year.

Lichens with Jupiter and lightpollution

Bright planet Jupiter in the night sky on this clear and cold evening. In the foreground is a birch with lava in different colors as I have used UV light to create fluorescence. Lichens on birch are usually harmless, superficial organisms that use the bark as a base without damaging the tree, often a sign of clean air. Common species include blue lichen and various crust lichens. Lichens do not penetrate the bark, do not cause rot and can benefit biodiversity by offering food to insects. The bright night sky is due to light pollution, caused by excessive or misdirected artificial night lighting, disrupting ecosystems, disrupting the circadian rhythm of humans and animals and obscuring the starry sky. It is a rapidly increasing environmental problem that negatively affects biodiversity, insect and bird migration patterns, and can be counteracted by targeted, warm white lighting, motion sensors and timers

Snow Moon and Planet Jupiter

A dramatic scene in the sky as clouds obscure the snow moon and the planet Jupiter. If you look closely at Jupiter in the right corner, you can also see three of its moons. The light is refracted in the clouds, creating beautiful colors.

When moonlight hits water droplets in clouds or rain, the light is refracted and reflected, splitting the white light into all the colors of the rainbow (red to violet). This optical phenomenon is called dispersion and occurs when light rays pass through the surface of the water droplets, bounce off the back, and are refracted again.