Perigee Lunar Eclipse - September 27, 2015

Sunset, Moonrise

I captured these photos as the sun was setting and the moon was rising the other night at Fenner Nature Center.  The red glow of the setting sun rays illuminated the branches of the tree limbs as they framed the nearly-full moon.

Jupiter, The Moon, & The Capitol

Thursday night, I took a few photos of the Capitol with the Moon and one of a very tiny Jupiter right above the peak of the dome (see above).  While it is not very bright, Jupiter still outshone any of the stars due to the city's light pollution.  It looked so small and insignificant in the sky even though Jupiter is 11 times the size of the Earth.  This got me thinking about the scale of Jupiter, the Earth, and the Moon using the Capitol for a frame of reference.  After some research and rough calculations, I came up with this graphic at the very bottom that tries to put these sizes into context, though the sizes are still hard to grasp!

Lunar Eclipse

I arose early this morning and hauled my gear down to a local parking garage in order to get a clear shot of the Moon as it experienced a full eclipse.  I had to fight some wind gusts that made the longer exposures needed for this kind of photography trickier.  When the Moon is full and bright, a relatively fast exposure still works.  However, it kept getting darker and darker, requiring several shutter speed changes.  The longer the shutter remains open, the chances you will have a blurred shot increase.  I aligned all these photos so that the Moon is about the same size and position in the frame to give you an idea of the Earth's encroaching shadow.  The very bottom photo is a compilation of several shots throughout the morning in one photo.

Almost Full Moon

The nearly full Moon created some interesting photos last weekend at the cabin.  The photograph above is the light of the Moon shining through the smoke of our campfire.  The photograph below is of the Moon lighting up the trees and the clouds streaking in front of it.  Even though it was only two-thirds full, the Moon lit up everything in this area free of light pollution.

Once In A...

Okay, the "blue moon" tonight was not really blue - that was just me playing with the colors.  However, tonight's blue moon is the only full moon this month.  I always thought that a blue moon is the second full moon in a month.  It seems that in reality, the blue moon is the third full moon in a season (i.e. spring, summer, etc.) that has four full moons.  Allegedly, a misinterpretation in 1943 of an old farmers' almanac gave us the "two-full-moons-in-a-month" definition of blue moon that has stuck around in popular culture.  The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting story about the blue moon: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0820/Blue-moon-Five-amazing-facts.