Sunrise Images and A Total Solar Eclipse

I am so sick and tired and tired of being sick and tired of winter, it's either frigging cold or it warms up only to snow. The weather here needless to say has not been cooperating with my celestial viewing habits, missed the Lunar/Pleiades conjunction earlier this month and this morning missed the Lunar, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars conjunction due to clouds, all was not lost though, the clouds which prevented me from seeing and imaging the planets allowed me to capture a beautiful Sunrise.


Atmospheric refraction stretched out the bottom of the Sun giving the it a cool oblonged shape.



Even got a Green Flash.




As well as a Red Flash


I'm hoping the weather will work with me March 2, the next major conjunction. Look to the West the evening of March 2 for another gathering of the Moon and Pleiades, they will be close together most of the night in North America but will be their closest together as the pair sets together around 2:30 am CST.

We had a penumbral eclipse February 9, oh and by the way I missed it as well due to clouds. A Penumbral eclipse is when the Moon passes through the Earth's penumbral shadow, what you see is a slight Earth shadow on the Lunar surface making part of the Moon look darker. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency released what the event looked like from the Moon. Using Kaguya's, High Definition camera, the orbiter captured a beautiful image of what we know all too well , the diamond ring effect that happens during a Total Solar Eclipse here on Earth, very pretty.

Kaguya is Japan's Lunar Orbiter who's mission it is to gather data such as the Moon's mineralogy and geographic data as well as magnetic and gravity field information so as to better understand the Moon's origin and evolution. Kaguya is expected to ends it's mission with a controlled fall to the Lunar surface sometime in June. I'll leave you now with a clip of the event.

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.