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By Ben, on August 24th, 2010
The moon goes by many different names. Here are the moon names for August according to MoonPhase, one of my favorite lunar apps for my iPod (and iPad, but I’m consulting the iPod version because Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless drained the battery last night and didn’t plug it in so it’s recharging from the wall charger):
August (Calendar Month)
Dog Days (in Colonial American parlance)
Sturgeon (Algonquin, which was the basis for the Farmers’ Almanac moon names)
Grain (English)
Dispute (Celtic)
Wyrt (Medieval wiccan)
Lightning (Neo pagan).
Whatever you call it, it happens today at 1:05 p.m. EDT. And as you may recall from previous full moon [...]
By Ben, on July 25th, 2010
It’s been said so often, and not just by those who dabble in astronomy, but perhaps especially often among those who do: patience is a virtue. After waiting up two hours past my normal bedtime for the summer moon to come out from behind the clouds, she finally did:
Last night’s insurance photo, all warm and fuzzy as it is, really isn’t in the same league. Part of the issue, I’m convinced, is that if I’ve already been asleep, I have a much harder time coaxing focus into my eyes. And on a difficult subject like the full moon through a [...]
By Ben, on June 28th, 2010
Friday night/Saturday morning, I decided to put my 2 a.m. wakeup call* to good use and get a shot of the moon at close to full. Backyard astronomy at its best!
The house is nice and cool these days, thanks to the a/c man and my suddenly light bank account, and the contrast between the cool and dry indoors and the hot and muggy out of doors was intense, even at 2:25 a.m. I thought I’d entered a sauna just by opening the door to the Florida room! There was a deep mist in the air, but not too dense; a [...]
By Ben, on June 27th, 2010
Here at long last is last month’s shot of the near full moon. Time, weather, and energy permitting, I’m still committed to posting at least one shot of each month’s full moon in 2010.
Depending on your browser, you can either click on the image, or mouse over the area to the right of the image, in order to see the caption/description. (In my browser, Safari for Mac, clicking on the image brings up a new window with a “full size” version. Full size in quotes, because I reduced it to 1200 pixels wide just to make it easy to upload.) [...]
By Ben, on May 2nd, 2010
Here is the best shot of a brief series I took before one of my many business trips last month (in case you were wondering why I haven’t been updating the blog very frequently):
[Show as slideshow]
By Ben, on April 6th, 2010
Jet lag from a recent trip to India combined with a cloudy night to make the blurry shot below the best one I could get of the full moon closest to the March equinox. Oh, well. Here, for the record, is the full moon from March 30, 2010, at 2:52 a.m.:
now, to compare it to December, January and February’s full moons, so we can see any libration effects:
Ignoring my poor alignment skills, you can see that Mare Crisium in March is much farther from the visible limb of the moon than it was in December. This means that it’s a [...]
By Ben, on March 1st, 2010
No, I’m not taking up drinking under the full moon (although that sounds like a nice idea!). I’ve got a new backyard astronomy project. Fresh off my foolhardy attempt to capture every day’s stage of the Winter moon (and having missed only two!), I’ve decided that now I’ll shoot for all the full moons of 2010, with the first full moon from December 2009 thrown in for good measure.
[Show as slideshow]
Above are the first three, the Blue Moon from 2009, and the Winter Moon and the Trapper’s Moon. [...]
By Ben, on January 30th, 2010
Last night’s moon (actually this morning’s, since the best break in the clouds came at 2:30 a.m.) reached full at 1:18 a.m. EST. I wasn’t awake to take its picture, but I woke up soon after full and discovered that, contrary to all expectation, there was a break in the clouds wide enough to permit some lunar photography. So voilà! The first full moon of a lunation that began in 2010:
Lest anyone doubt that the full moon is much brighter than nearly full moons, this images was made at 1/125 second exposure time, f/3.5. The previous night’s image was 1/60; [...]
By Ben, on September 4th, 2009
Normally, September’s full moon is called the Harvest Moon. This year, though, because full moon comes so early in the month, the time of sunset and that of moonrise are still too far apart for it to be a “real” harvest moon. You see, in order for the moon to be helpful to farmers, who for centuries had no source of artificial light more friendly than lanterns, the time of sunset had to be fairly close to the time of moonrise. So a true harvest moon requires moonrise to be within 15-30 minutes of sunset. Otherwise, it’s just a September [...]
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