Monday, September 28, 2015

Light Refraction

I stayed up late last night, did you? There was a total eclipse of the moon. Ordinarily I wouldn’t stay up to watch it, I mean once you’ve watched the Earth block the moon from the sun and cast a shadow…. what is different from time to time? What made this one different, was three things; the moon was nearly full, was at its closest point to Earth and due to the position and light refraction it was a Blood moon, so called because of the red/orange hue the moon takes on during the eclipse.

I almost didn’t prepare for it, as we had clouds all day…. But just before the first picture… the clouds started to clear out…. I missed the moonrise due to the clouds… so no full shot… of the plain old yellow moon and I didn’t stay up long enough to get a shot of the plain old moon after either.

While in South Africa, we had a Blood moon eclipse and I tried to get some decent pictures, but due to my novice experience and the lighting (safety lighting that only went off in power outages) I didn’t get such great pictures. Not that what I have posted here will win any prizes…. But these are better than the ones I took in 2011.

bloodmoon-start

The start

bloodmoon-halfway

about halfway

bloodmoon-done

and (nearly) done.

If you missed it, the next one will be in 20 years, so plan accordingly if you want to see one yourself.

Speaking of light refraction. It is spider season these days and most mornings… there are some huge webs strung up in the yard…. As I was preparing to leave one morning the light on one of the webs was beautiful. Showing a web…. in a different light… anyway, I did not have time to find a perfect web strung up in a perfect setting…. Or even harder… the perfect web in the perfect light…. The spiders are hiding… so nothing to fear in the pictures below.

light-refracting-web-2

web-refraction

And lastly, I think the trees are leaning a little toward fall. This is the first leaf I found with color on the ground in the yard, a couple of weeks ago. A maple… of course.

maple-leaf-fall

More Later! 

Beth

3 comments:

  1. Beth,
    Your moon shots are great. We had heavy clouds all evening and I went to a girl scout meeting and went to bed dead tired, not even bothering to check for the eclipse.

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  2. I could get little peeks of the moon through the clouds but it wasn't worth standing there and watching the whole thing. Some areas around us had a clearer view.

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  3. Lovely shots Beth, of the moon and the webs. very cool! I think the moon seems so much bigger and beautiful tonight than I remember in a long time. probably just because I'm paying attention...

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