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.👇

 

Little me's big adventure...and the Aurora...

 

Hubby has coverage and meals all set up. He and Charlie get a break from me and I get a break from them. All the farm animals are taken care of. The weather looks good and I am so ready to go see my new little granddaughter and of course her folks.

I've decided to stay at a hotel near Lake Michigan and do a bit of shopping, walking, and seeing the sights of the town I used to live in years ago. 

The drive there will be casual. I'll listen to music and take a route so that I can visit a place called Paradise Springs again. I'll feel a bit like my life is untethered and free at least for a little while. That is about the nicest thing I can do for myself.

Last night I saw that we might be able to see an Aurora Borealis show. My neighbor -- who I share the driveway with asked if I was going to watch for it. She said she'd text me if she saw anything and I agreed to text her if I saw anything.

She did text me around 7:30 to say she saw faint pinks in the northern sky and it wasn't even dark yet!

I ran out and got this....

It was very faint to the naked eye but I was ecstatic! I set things up in our little valley and asked my neighbor if she wanted to come down and get the view of a bigger sky. She couldn't, the kids were in bed and hubby was at a meeting.

So I walked up to her place in the woods.
The show was still incredible.

When the skies did this....

I thought it would be fun to do a star trail. The Oly camera I use has a LiveComp setting which detects light movement and adds it to a composite as it happens.

I don't have to take 400 shots and then align them later. 

Each time the waves of color moved, the camera added that to the photo also.

What I ended up with after 25 minutes was wild...

👇

Airplanes and maybe some shooting stars passed overhead.

While the camera was doing its magic Cibyl and I stretched out on the gravel with our cell phones and took shots.

We even walked out to the road where she dropped into the ditch and laid back to view and shoot the sky.

Cellphone shots...

I mean, it was insane and we oohhheedddd and ahhhhhed and giggled like kids. 

Cibyl sent me a chart explaining the colors that we saw:

I took so many cellphone shots that it was crazy. They turned out okay.

But I enjoyed trying to nail something special with the Olympus.

Star Trails above her house when the sky turned red with green and yellow... the Aurora waves were so bright that they washed out the stars in the lower part of the photo.

It felt insane to see the skies turn red at night.

I commented that if it wasn't the Aurora...it would look like the end of the world...

It fluctuated and changed and seemed never ending.

Finally, we called it a night. Her hubby came home and the lights started to fade.

At least...

That is what I thought...

As I came down the driveway, my naked eyes saw something faint in the east...

still going on...

But I was tired and had miles to put on the next morning. So I thought I'd take a finishing shot over our house.

I was so pleased at what showed up.

Moon me!

The full Super Moon of September 17th is known as the Harvest Moon and the Blood Moon. 

I've missed quite a few moon rises this year because I just didn't feel like going up to the ridge to wait on the moonrise. 

This was my first glimpse of the moon after it came up out of the river mists from the valley below.

I stopped on my way home...

I don't know if there was smoke in the air or what, but it sure was orange at first! Perhaps this is how it earns the 'Blood Moon' moniker.

I was determined to stay up and see the partial eclipse. I've done moon eclipses before and over the years I struggled with photographing it. 

Practice, practice, and practice helps. So I gave it another go.

I took some stages of the moon and then overlayed them on one black background to try to simulate what I saw over an hour. The shots started at 9:00 PM and went through until about 10:15 PM.

This morning's moon was surrounded slightly by a hazy sky but I took one last shot of it anyway...

There is light...

I thought the Fireflies were done, until I walked out the other night at dusk to put the pony back in his pen for the night.

I thought I'd check out the meadow this time with a view to the northeast.

The old apple tree across the fence is in deep grass and brush. The photo is dark, but you can see that the Lightening Bugs were sure busy!

I then took the camera and faced it towards the evening sky. There was barely any light at all, but the neat thing about modern day cameras is that they pick up light better than the human eye.

The meadow's grass is pretty short here from grazing so I didn't see a lot of bugs lighting up. However the color of the clouds and the sky were beautiful.

I also could see the Big Dipper!

I set up for longer exposures hoping to get more Fireflies and more star movement all in one shot.

I used a 8 minute LiveComp exposure setting on the camera and hit the jackpot.

In the distance there was some lightening from a storm cell, I got the start of a star trail with the Big Dipper at the center, and the Fireflies showed up in great numbers. They also streaked across the sky in front of the camera.

Lucky me, I only got one airplane flying through the exposure.

I set up to do just one more exposure, but the Mosquitoes simply were not cooperative. I could have set the camera up and walked away for 10 minutes but I get nervous leaving the camera on a tripod when we have wildlife that move through the area.

Normally the bugs are not this bad. In fact, I think we are quite spoiled as we don't have lakes and ponds in our area, only rivers and streams. It does cut down on the bothersome skeeters.

Even sunrises are not so much fun right now. 

This was my Friday night attempt at a shots.

The crescent moon is on the left and my neighbor's yard light on their farm 1/2 mile away is on the right.
The fireflies are in the are down below. It was very warm and just after sunset. They were exceptionally active! I was quite surprised. The shot is taken over the mule pasture which is full of weeds and grass.

I turned north and spotted the Big Dipper just coming out in the dusk. It looks as though it is dumping right onto the spot where our house is!

As it got a bit darker, I decided to shoot a star trail over our house with the Big Dipper as the center.

Nah. I didn't quite get the Dipper in the middle and then I quit because no matter how many times I tried...airplanes had decided to use the north-south corridor in their flight pattern.

I tried several times only to continuously get airplane tracks.

One of the planes was rather low!

That is the bright white streak.

In my imagination ... later on. This could have been an alien ship trying to beam us up! Right?

Alas, it was just a small airplane flying low overhead. I imagine it was going to our tiny local airport which was having a pancake breakfast and fly in on Saturday morning.

I guess I'll keep trying.

Last night some storms came through to the south of us. I set up on the porch for a little bit to see if I could catch any lightening action.

Nope.

I did catch the night sky light up with lightening far off and some lightening bugs were busy in the yard.

It would have been cool to catch a lightening bolt.

I gave up and went in as the skeeters decided I was great food.

The night sky is a reminder
that even in the darkest
times.

There will always

be

light.

Night of the Fireflies...

I haven't been out to see the fireflies this year...well, that is until Saturday night. The skies have been smokey and the nights have been chilly. I decided to go ahead and look for them last night.

They were numerous!

View back towards the house...

This was just at 'Blue Hour' when Venus was visible in the sky. Our home is just to the right of the pines.

Fireflights/lightening bugs prefer the tall grasses and the woods. If you don't have an area that is unmowed, you won't see as many. I stood at the edge of our yard and took this shot of the meadow on the other side of the fence.

For anyone interested in how this was done. I used my Olympus E-M1 Mark iii which has a 'Starry Sky' Auto focus to help focus things in the dark. I used a setting called LiveComp. I set the LiveComp up to a 4 second exposure for 4 minutes. That means that each 4 seconds that passes by, the camera records any changes to the light and adds it essentially as a layer over the previous exposures for 4 minutes. ISO was set at 1600 and I had to modify the white balance.

I know that sounds like Greek to many folks, but there it is...

Setting it up and figuring out where to point it is the hard part sort of. 

I stopped while heading to the ridge:

The Driveway...

Tigen Road where I noted that the lightening bugs hung out along the long grass in the ditches.

At the mailbox...

And then I took a 'selfie'. The lights from the town 3 miles away was rather intense and gave the sky an odd color as the humidity, haze, and smokey sky increased the odd oranges. 

Could we please get some rain????

Sunday is Father's Day. So I leave these two photos of my father.

Young Dad:

I'm guessing this might be a clue as to why I love photography?

Dad in 2001 when we were in Hawai'i together.

What an experience

I've always wanted to do a night hike/walk on a full moon at KVR. This week, the full moon is on Saturday and Olive said she'd go with me.

Whoops! 
The forecast for the rest of the week calls for clouds, thunderstorms, and rain. 

Darn

Darn

Darnnit!

Instead of scrapping all of my enthusiasm, I decided to text Olive to let her know I was going on Wednesday night around sunset. She couldn't go but I was all set.

I debated going to the Black Hawk Rock, but I'd told Rich that I'd be at the south end of KVR near the incomplete dam. So I stuck to my plans.

First thing I noticed while driving in the dark was that my eyes were bothering me. I am supposed to get my new lenses/glasses in a few days so I was wearing the backups. 

Now I see the moon at night with a halo and rainbow around it. I'd started noticing that probably a year or so ago and I know that is a sign of cataracts. 

The photo below is grabbed from an internet web page that talks about vision. This is the closest I can find as to how I see the moon these days. It ISN'T quite as bad as this photo, but you get the idea.

[at first I thought it was dirty glasses until the truth smacked me up side the head]

My eye doctor confirmed it and just last week he'd stated they were continuing to increase but they still could correct my vision. No need for surgery yet.

However, the moon looked like this when I took a photo:

Gibbous Moon

I parked and got out of the car. Mist and ground fog swirled around me in the moonlight. Suddenly I was really pleased at my decision to go to the south end.

I set up the tripod and tried a few different shots and spent about an hour perhaps just moving around and trying different angles.

Shot of the view just up on top of the dam looking towards LaFarge:

I don't think I had it properly focused here, but I really just like how it feels like a painting.

I really wanted a phot of me standing in the mist. It took several tries and a lot of trotting back and forth. 

I used an interval timer on the camera. I could of used my smartphone as a remote, but I didn't want to fool around with it.

After several tries, I ended up with this:

This is Campsite AA near the Dam Trail in Kickapoo Valley Reserve. It is one of the more open campsites. The ground fog continuously changed and moved while I was there.

For those that might want to know how I did it, here are the tech specs.

Olympus E M1 Mark III
12-40mm lens at 12mm
f 2.8
10 sec exposure

ISO 500

I left the camera on those settings for my walk.

I got to Bridge 18 spending some time trying to do light painting, which really was an epic failure on my part.

Looks like I need more practice and perhaps some tutorials.

I got to the pond area and enjoyed listening to the night sounds. Out in the water there was plops and splashes which I assumed were fish [I thought perhaps it was Jaws, but I didn't hear the theme music, so I was okay]. In the dark with the bright moon shading the pond, it was hard to see anything [or is it my eyes? or was is the heavy humidity?].

The next shot is me... fiddling with my smarty - pants - phone trying to make it take a remote shot. Obviously, it worked so I have lots to learn with this since it wouldn't accept a 10 second delay.

Huh.

Technology!

The pond. This was my goal all along but I didn't spend much time here. My whole goal was to get a nice reflection of the stars in the water. However the water was full of yucky weed. But I did get a tiny reflection!

I checked my time and decided to head back. It was so easy to enjoy the night and quiet time by myself. So much so that I hadn't really thought about time. I told Rich I'd be home between 10 and 11. It was already 10!

My last shot of the evening. I really was lucky that everything fell into place when I walked back. Bridge 18 gave me a chance to redeem my earlier mistakes and the lighting was better. 

Driving home in the dense fog with other vehicles coming at me on the twisted road? Well, that was a bit tense at times. 

The experience was like no other. I was totally comfortable and in my element.

I'll do this again. Maybe I'll go to the rock next time? 
I sure could get lost under the night skies....

"She's lost under the moon again
and doesn't want to be found."

--Daniel Mercury