Earthshine Refraction and Moon Illusion

Actually I went out just to capture the celestial gathering of Saturn and the Moon, the image below, when by chance I got a cool image of a squashy honking big brown Moon, may not be the proper astronomical terms, but the Moon looked astronomical none the less.

Notice the Moon's flat bottom, this is caused by the refraction of the Moon's light back onto itself from all the dust and water particles in our lower atmosphere, kind of bends the light upwards onto itself. The same particles scatter the blues of the Moonlight and allow the reds through to be seen by us, hence a red brown Moon. Then we have what we call the Moon illusion, because the Moon being so close to the ground, our mind by comparing it to the Earthly surroundings make the Moon seem very large.


The Earthshine is caused by the Sunlight reflecting off the Earth onto the Moon lighting up the Moon's night side, the bright part of the Moon we see in the images is the Sunlight reflecting off the Moon directly to us, what we call Moonlight.


Below are some more Moon with Earthshine images I took on my outing.







Just a reminder if you want to enter the "Find and Photograph The Daytime Moon Contest" now is the time to take your Pics. The Moon will be in it's New Moon Phase tomorrow but will start waxing to larger crescents after that, closing date will be November 3rd, lots of opportunity to get your daytime crescent Moon and maybe even win 50 pairs of Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses, think of the possibilities, all the 3D parties you could throw, great stocking stuffers, boggles the mind.

I'll leave you now with an animated daytime crescent Moon complete with clouds.

Moon, Jupiter Conjunction

Sunday April 27th. in the early morning hours we had a Lunar, Jupiter conjunction, how early, well it started as the pair rose, around 2:47 am. That's right 2:47 am, now you'd think everyone in their right mind would probably be asleep at that time, unless and of course they knew of the conjunction, not so, it was a busy morning, all kinds of cabs driving people home from the bars, one of my spots is right across from an apartment complex, oh and there were a couple kids doing 360's in their cars behind me in the Shoppers Drug Mart parking lot, hey why not Shoppers had all their parking lot lights on through the whole night even though they close at midnight, I guess they aren't getting with the whole Earth Hour type thing.

The image above is a wide angle shot, notice the beautiful red Moon, people ask me, was the Moon really that red, yes,... yes it was, because the Moon was low on the horizon, its moonlight had to travel through more atmosphere, the atmospheric particles scatter the blues of the moonlight and allow the reds through , no photoshop adjustments, actually it was a darker red, almost couldn't see it, it is a lighter red in the image because of the 4 second exposure lightening it up some. The image below, an 8 second exposure again lightening the color.

Looking at these pictures can't convey the surrealistic feeling you have viewing it live and in person, it was unbelievable, the red Moon seemed to be floating in a sea of black, too cool.

I'm pretty excited, My wife and I will be taking a weeks vacation starting May 10th to visit my oldest daughter Amanda and boyfriend Dave in Kelowna British Columbia. They have two of the cutest, what my wife likes to call Granddogs, one being an Old English Sheepdog Great Pyrenees cross, the other a Newfoundland Great Pyrenees cross, Ill take pics and post. There should be plenty of photo ops with the beautiful weather, the mountains and since they live outside of town there will be lots of dark skies for star gazing, expect some cool photos.

A friendly reminder about the Eta Aquarids meteor shower Monday May 5th. 4 am, look to the Southeast just up from the horizon, then Tuesday May 6th look to the West-Northwest 45 minutes after Sunset for the Moon with earthshine, Mercury and Pleiades gathering.

I'll leave you now with an animated gif of one of my Moon, Jupiter pics.

ATV Docks With The ISS

I was so lucky to be able to get the above image Wednesday April 2nd. the night before the International Space Station and the Automated Transfer Vehicle docked. Very cool to see the little ATV follow behind the big bright ISS the length of the sky, like a baby duckling following it's mother, very cute, I mean not kitten playing with a ball of string cute, but space cute. Cute isn't word I throw around lightly on this blog, this blog is about space stuff, space is one of the harshest environments known to humankind, not cute.

The ATV docked with the ISS Thursday April 3rd at 10:45 am EDT. The Automated Transfer Vehicle, Jules Verne, named after the science fiction writer carries important cargo to the station such as water, scientific equipment, oxygen, nitrogen and propellant. Jules Verne will be docked with the ISS for 6 months allowing the crew to unload it's cargo then reload the vehicle with the station's waste products. Just before the ATV leaves it will fire it's thrusters to push the ISS into a higher orbit, detach and then fire it's thrusters once again to put it into a de-orbit for a controlled destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean. The docking procedure was fully automated, the ATV is guided by lasers, that's right lasers to guide it to the docking port, anything that uses lasers to guide it is too cool. I get so excited when I talk about stuff like the ATV, Shuttle and the ISS, people we have different countries working together for a common good to do hard science, so that instead of flying by the stars of the Big Dipper so to speak, we can one day fly to.

Jules Verne is the first of at least seven ATVs planned for the ISS. The ATV was developed by the European Space Agency over 10 years at a cost of 1.9 billion dollars for an exchange of astronaut slots in the upcoming ISS crews. The ATV class cargo ship can carry up to 3 times the amount of payload as the current station service vehicles the Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.

Get ready for a beautiful conjunction/occultation of the crescent Moon complete with earthshine and the Pleiades star cluster this coming Tuesday April 8th. Look to the west just after Sunset for the stunning gathering, hopefully I'll have clear skies to take some pics. I'll leave you now with a clip I put together of the ATV following the ISS the night of April 2nd.

Earthshine, City Aurora and The UFO Show

People I'm loving this camera, in the last 3 months I've taken over 3,000 shots, given me something to do while my scopes are out of commission due to the cold weather, kept me off the street, not like I've ever been on the street, but if I ever was on the street, I'd be off the street now baby. I took the above image of the Moon during it's last crescent phase to show off its Earthshine which is Sunlight reflected off the Earth back onto the Moon's dark phase, to give the Moon an aspen glow.

The interesting thing about the above picture is I wasn't trying to image the aurora, I was trying to image the Genesis 1 satellite that was going to be passing by at that time at that altitude, in fact the aurora wasn't even visible, but after a 30 second exposure at ISO of 3200 the coolest thing happened, the aurora showed up, right over the city, reminds me of how in space shows when a spacecraft attacks another and for an instant the shield of the attacked spacecraft lights up, well we are under attack by all kinds of cosmic rays and the solar wind, and we have our Magnetosphere to protect us and it's lighting up says, hey I'm working.

There was a science fiction show called UFO that ran from 1970-1973, it was set in the 80's and it was basically about aliens trying to capture and kill humans for their body parts, to foil the aliens there was a top secret organization called SHADO, Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation. I just got my DVD megaset in the mail. This show was so cool for so many reasons, especially for someone my age at the time, it had UFOs, aliens, air battles, oh and the Moon girls had purple hair, and English accents. Another thing, I loved the fact that whenever the pilots go off to battle the aliens, they slide down a ramp to get into their spacecraft, very awesome.

I was lucky enough to find on You Tube a video of the 1 minute intro to the show, yep this is the kind of stuff I watch.

Remember to do your part for Earth Hour tonight March 29 8 pm-9 pm, just turn off a light, a computer, tv just for the hour, we as individuals can make a difference to retard the effects of global warming. I'll be out weather permitting to see the difference in the amount of stars I can see as our city will be turning off non-essential lights between 8 pm and 9 pm.

The Old Moon In The New Moon's Arms

Moonlight is Sunlight that is reflected off the Moon to us on Earth, Earthshine or the Da Vinci Glow is caused by Moonlight reflected back off the Earth onto the Moon, or doubly reflected Sunlight. Called the Da Vinci Glow because Da Vinci first said the "ashen glow" was Sunlight reflected off our Earth back onto the Moon, before Leonardo figured it out no one knew what it was.

Got a couple of cool images a couple weeks ago, again I am amazed my camera worked , -35c. Best time to view Earthshine is during the crescent phase of the Moon and as it is setting. You can see the neat affect the Earthshine has on the Moon, it lights up the Moons dark phase so you can see the outline of the seas and the Moon itself.

STS 123 Shuttle Endeavour has a scheduled launch date of March 11 at 2:30am from the Kennedy Space Center. The Endeavour will be delivering and installing the first section of the Japanese Kibo science research facility on the ISS , as well as delivering and installing Dextre, a two armed robot with the ability to carry out maintenance work that would have been done before by spacewalking astronauts.

I'll leave you now with one of my current Sunsets as an animated gif.

Launch Day

Launch day for the Discovery. Still a chance the launch might be delayed due to incoming clouds but as of this writing they are fueling up the shuttle. Despite concerns raised by an independent safety group about cracks in the shuttles wing panels the launch will proceed at 11:38am EDT. NASA is saying "the defects are too small to allow hot gasses to burn through the composite carbon covers and destroy the spaceship during atmospheric re-entry".

Shuttle Discovery's main mission is to install the Harmony module. They will also be testing new space shuttle heat shield repair methods, also moving a solar truss segment, this will be a huge job, or as they put it " like moving an entire house from one neighborhood to another. There are 5 planned spacewalks, the most ever during a shuttle flight, plenty of opportunity to catch them on NASA TV which is what I'm watching right now as I'm doing this post. T minus 3 hrs and holding, that's what the guy just said now on NASA TV, I will be watching the launch as well, remember cool TV camera angles during launch. The shuttle is planned for return on November 6th. 4:47 am EST.




I love Earthshine! Moonlight is what we see when the Sun's light bounces off the Moon onto the Earth, Earthshine is what we see on the Moon when that same light is bounced back off Earth onto the Moon again. Earthshine is the faint glow on the dark portion of the crescent Moon. I took the above image during the last waning crescent. The Moon was low on the horizon so it got a nice yellow tint to it. You can see because of the Earthshine some of the Lunar surface features on the dark portion of the Moon, like the dark Maria,(seas) Another cool thing is, look at the terminator, you can see the highlight of craters as it makes it's way across the Lunar surface.

Leonardo Da Vinci first discovered what Earthshine was back around 1510, he said the ghostly glow was due to sunlight bouncing off Earth's oceans and , in turn hitting the Moon, well he was partly right, the reflected sunlight bouncing off the Earth's clouds is the major source of Earthshine.

My name that puppy poll is now closed and it looks like drowseymonkey won, so unless me and drowseymonkey have some sort of falling out, which is kind of hard to do since we never had a falling in, don't even really know this person, (in fact I'm beginning to suspect drowseymonkey isn't her real name), I will be naming my puppy drowseymonkey. It will be a good conversation starter as I try to explain the name to friends and family, but deep down inside I know it's the right name. I'd like to take a moment to thank all of those who participated in the poll and to those of you who didn't, don't complain when I mention my dog's name drowseymonkey in my posts, you had your chance.