Daytime Celestial Viewing

Who hasn't looked to the heavens during the day, usually to see what the weather is like, besides the weather one of my favorite daytime targets is a small crescent Moon. It's fun and rewarding if you can find it as the glare from the Sun makes it almost impossible to spot let alone image.



So here's the thing, I will give some lucky person 50 Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus 3D glasses if you are chosen as the winner by me, my cat and a select few other judges of the "Find and Photograph The Daytime Crescent Moon Contest", Let me tell you 50 3D glasses doesn't even put a dent in my collection. Not only will you receive the valuable 3D glasses estimated to be worth lots but I will post your images on this blog, actually I will post all submissions to my blog, up for the challenge? Hint, some dates to look out for; October 25-27 in the South West. October29-31 in the South. November 24-26 in the South West, November 28-30 in the South.



Second place winner will receive a DVD of the coolest movie around "In The Shadow Of The Moon". I can't say enough about this movie, all about the Apollo Missions and the effect going to the Moon had on the Astronaut's lives, and the soundtrack is killer. The best part of this whole thing is if you enter an image, you'll probably be the only one that does, hey, guaranteed to win.

To help you out I'll save you some time, the camera settings I used that had the Moon stand out best for the daytime shot were, ISO 100, exposure 1/500 sec. To find out what phase the Moon is in just click on my Moon phase button on my sidebar, to find the location in the sky of the Moon just go to Sky View Cafe and type in your city, it will come back with the location of everything in the sky on any particular time or day for your location. Any questions and to submit your image just email me.


While we're on the topic of daytime celestial viewing back in August I got a shot of some crepuscular rays. These rays are huge shadows cast into the sky just before Sunrise or just after Sunset by the Sun's rays interfering with clouds, mountains or in the case above, atmospheric interference caused by all the forest fires here in Saskatchewan . We had around 3x the average amount of fires this year as compared to the rest of Canada. Due to the serious and far ranging implications of these fires NASA sent a 120 scientists and a couple planes to the military base in Cold Lake Alberta to analyse their effect on our environment .



I got an email from from an intern at GOOD Magazine who thought my readers would enjoy their latest movie production on satellites, I agree, it is very cool.