Big Night Out

The August Sturgeon Moon was the big event of the week. I was excited to be able to watch the partial eclipse.

I raced up to the ridge and caught the full moon rising over the cropland. 

As darkness settled in the moon lit up the night sky with a brilliant orange. 

At home, I prepared two cameras so I could shoot two different scenes at once. One camera with the long lens set up for just shooting the moon.

My other much older camera set up to shoot [hopefully] stars.

I'd never tried shooting star trails during a full moon. The dogs joined me in the yard and trotted around with their collar lights. They were not too interested in what I was doing even though I explained in great detail about the camera settings and how everything worked.

At least when I talk out loud, I can say that I'm talking to the pups and not to myself.

As I started photographing the eclipse, my cohorts asked to go in and sleep on their blankets. Kids!

I had one camera in the driveway and the other one at the edge of the pasture pointed at the house.

Imagine my surprise when I actually was able to 'do' a star trail with the bright moon shining! [plus satellite and plane trails].

I was ecstatic. I had always thought that one couldn't shoot star trails unless one had perfectly dark skies.

Well.

I guess that is a fallacy. 

The moon slowly started to enter earth's shadow. 

I set a timer for every 20 minutes to take a shot of the changing moon.

I walked back and forth between the two places I had cameras set up. I drank decaf coffee to keep awake [and yes, it helped].

As the moon got darker and darker I fiddled around and finally got a decent set up for the next star trail looking north from the other side of the house.

The dogs asked to come out for another inspection. I think if they could have talked they'd have demanded that I come in and go to bed.

I watched the moon became a sliver. 

And then I noticed something very unusual.

I could see the Milky Way. I could SEE the Milky Way on a Full Moon night.

So I took this shot. Not great, but one can see the light of the partial moon and the Milky Way.

I was breathless. The shot didn't turn out very well, but still...it was something you never can see during a full moon. 

I was done in by this time and the heavy dew was getting my cameras wet, so I called it a night.

Of course I couldn't just go to bed, I was too wired up. I decided to review my photos right then.

The final composite of the moon

 shots put together in one frame. 

It will be a night I won't forget. 

I didn't go to bed until about 2AM. [up at 5:30!]

How lucky was I that I could stand in my driveway and watch this event take place.

The last time I'd photographed a lunar eclipse was May 26, 2021. I caught part of the eclipse while hiking to the top of a bluff in the dark and getting a shot as the moon was heading west and the sun was rising.

It was called the Super Blood Moon/Flower Moon.👇

 

Socks and the Eclipse

I woke up early this morning and didn't even think about the Lunar Eclipse. In fact I had a raging old headache and I was positively feeling kind of grumpy.

I'd given up even looking for the moon or driving to the ridge to watch it or photograph it. Grumpy Me.

However, I got a little text from my neighbor wayyyyy up on the ridge. The view of the Eclipse was stunning from her deck. I am jealous of her views except when the winds blow. I grabbed my long lens and walked outside in stocking feet.

I could see it!

What a goof. Instead of putting on shoes or boots, I jogged down to the mule pasture and ducked through the hot wires. I trotted up to where I could see the moon. My shots were noisy and messy because I just flipped the camera to Auto ISO. It was 28 degrees and I was in PJ's.

The pictures are not very great, but hey, I got to see it!

My neighbor to the west of us...they are half a mile away.

and then...

it was gone...as the sun rose and the moon set.

Funny thing.

My headache went away. 

So there you go.

Maybe the cold air was a good thing.

One Longgg Day

I woke up at 4ish something o'clock, that gave me time to drink my decafe and pretend that it was caffiene coffee thta would give me a jump start on the day. Sunday was the lunar eclipse day! Yipee! I get excited about the strange things.

Charlie and I went for a nice early morning walk to check out the different trees I had tried to ID last year to see if I'd learned anything. 

By 7, I'd finished up my crazy Saturday blog stuff and went out to wash stock tanks and move critters around. Well. Let's keep it short. I was like a busy bee all morning.

I promised myself that I'd take a midafternoon nap because I wanted to stay up and watch the lunar eclipse. Hah. I didn't take a nap. I went Morel hunting and it was a flop!

Me, waiting for the sunset before watching the moon come up.

Sunset:

Moon rise...I was afraid the clouds would cover it all up but we got lucky!

The photos didn't turn out that well. I am not that great at doing moon shoots yet. The clarity still evades me, but these are some samples of what I got.

I tried to get the clouds moving through and it just really flubbed up the photo! 

The following is 57 seconds of the first half of the eclipse. It is wiggly because the moon of course kept moving out of frame. IF I had a movie/video editing program I suppose I could have edited the clips to make them all nice looking. However I rarely do any video work. ON1 has a nice time lapse feature which I used to do the sunset ~~ that was 27 seconds in camera and like 3 seconds at the frame rate the program has for choices. 

Keep watching to the end because it looks like the moon disappears...it does into clouds but I recorded until it went black!

57 seconds of the eclipse:

I didn't get to bed until wayyyy past my bed time. 

Monday proved to be a most excellent day.  More on that tomorrow.