moon

A shadow on the moon

Posted on by Patrick
The moon, slowly being covered by Earth's shadow

I set up on the deck last night for an hour or so to get the lunar eclipse.

Full size (about 7MB)

The images in the panora­ma above were tak­en at 2‑minute inter­vals (with occa­sion­al adjust­ment to the cam­er­a’s aim). They’re all 250mm, f/5.6, and either 1/100s, ISO 100 (the cres­cents) or 1s, 200 ISO (the rud­dy disks).

Since I was already out there, and the sky was clear, I set up my 2nd cam­era, point­ing straight up, to get some star trails. (And satel­lite tracks aplen­ty, some irid­i­um flares, and maybe a very small mete­or or two.)

Star trails, as seen from my deck

This one’s made up of ~630 images, each 11mm, f/2.8, 5s. (I did­n’t check the ISO on these, but I’d guess it’s in the 100–400 range.)

The moon, and some frost

Posted on by Patrick
white frost on dark branches against a clear blue sky

The wan­ing gib­bous moon looked pret­ty, so I snapped some quick pho­tos of it this morn­ing while my toast was toasting.

The moon, looking sepia in a black sky

And then, while I was work­ing, I noticed that the trees all had a thin lay­er of frost on them that stood out nice­ly against the blue sky, so I once again grabbed my camera.

white frost on dark branches against a clear blue sky

This work­ing from home thing, man, it’s pret­ty sweet.

Mars photobombing the full moon

Posted on by Patrick
The full moon seen through the branches of a tree

The moon tonight is very full and very bright, and there’s a tiny lit­tle speck of light juu­u­u­u­ust about touch­ing it. I checked and it turns out it’s Mars.

(I real­ize I kind of gave it away in the title. So it goes.)

The full moon. An inset shows the very small, slightly reddish dot that is Mars.
That tiny red­dish dot in the 4×original size inset? That’s a planet.

[Edit] I just real­ized it’s also the 50th anniver­sary today of the launch of Apol­lo 17, the last crewed mis­sion to the moon. Here’s to the con­tin­ued suc­cess of the Artemis project and the return of humans to the lunar surface.