Snowflake 951 - a photo on Flickriver

Snowflake 951

Snowflakes often have plenty of side-branches, but that’s not always the case. Occasionally, you encounter crystals that are nearly entirely void of such features. How does that happen? I’ll tell you, but first I’d like you to check out the latest coin I designed for the Royal Canadian Mint – a pure silver hexagonal coin featuring a snowflake: www.mint.ca/en/shop/coins/2023/dollar20-pure-silver-hexag...

The “branching instability”. When the corner of a hexagon gets farther and farther away from the neighbouring corners in a small plate, the growth of the corners will eventually outpace the growth between them, causing branches to form. When those branches continue to grow farther and farther from the center, they will grow relatively straight out until they encounter a momentary “bump” in humidity. These bumps are just the nature of a cloud – some parts slightly denser with water vapour than others.

But what happens when a growing snowflake does not encounter any of these bumps, and the growth is completely stable with extremely little variation? You’ll have completely straight arms radiation away from the center. There were some very small environmental changes here, but not enough to create the sprawling side-branches we normally associate with stellar-type crystals.

Something else is happening here at the tips of each branch. As the branches get farther away from the center of the snowflake, there is more space in between them. More space = greater access to building blocks (water molecules). Snowflakes will always grow in the direction of available building blocks, but that doesn’t necessarily mean “always outward”. The branches widen at the end because the available material for growth is able to strike the sides of the branches more readily from all angles.

You’ll notice that the tips of each branch have mostly faded details (except for the upper-left branch which has a bit of clutter on it). This means that their surface topographic details are on the other side of the crystal, facing away from the camera. I typically like to showcase these features, as well as a central hexagon I know to be on the opposite side of the center. With these delicate crystals, however, they will break apart very easily. I use a small artist’s paintbrush to gently manipulate a snowflake to get to the proper angle for shooting, and I’ve shatter them to pieces in the process more times than I can count.

That paintbrush is a very helpful tool in other ways. Since a snowflake is often so small and difficult to find through the viewfinder, before picking up the camera, I place the brush down so that it points directly toward the snowflake I want to capture. Now with the camera to my face, I only need to discover the (comparatively) large brush and use it as a guide to locate precisely the snowflake I seek.

Taken on: June 2, 2018

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Camera: Panasonic DC-GH5S, f/4.0, 1/160 sec, 65mm (=130mm), ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Panasonic DC-GH5S
Lens:	#124 65/2.8
Aperture:	f/4.0
Exposure Time:	0.006 sec (1/160)
Focal Length:	65mm (35mm equivalent: 130mm)
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	On, Fired
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Manual
Light Source:	Fine Weather
Gain Control:	Low gain up
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 24.7 (Windows)
Show full info

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