Super duper moon
Yay, super duper moon tonight. I thought we’d miss it entirely, but around 7 p.m. the clouds that had blanketed Corvallis all day lift, lucky me!
I’m not prepared – figuring the clouds would foil me as they did when I wanted to shoot the last lunar eclipse – so I didn’t wander around town today looking for a good spot to shoot like I thought I would. With the moonrise coming (scheduled for 8:24p), I talk Adam into going out to Bald Hill farm with our bikes and Yoshi at 7:15.
We bike the path until I find a nice hill ( I worried it was on someone’s property, but went ahead and set up, anyway). Then I check my compas, set up the tripod to that.
And am ready to go, it’s 7:50.
Then I check my iPhone Star Walk app, and it says the moon is actually a little more north – I move and set up again. Am ready to go … again … by 8:10.
Then we wait. It’s pretty darn cold out here. Yoshi’s even getting cold; course, he had a haircut Monday, so he’s practically naked. I’d be cold, too.
The moon’s supposed to come up at 8:24. By 8:30, I’m like wtf is up? I check Star Walk, it says it’s coming up? What gives?
THEN, I notice the semitransparent, nearly not there, huge as hell half circle coming up about 30 degrees south from where Star Walk says the moon is.
Thanks for nothing Star Walk app.
Here’s how ghostly the moon was first coming up. We missed the first half of it coming up because we weren’t looking in the right direction and it was barely there anyway. Maybe that’s a result of the haze? It was so big I wasn’t even sure it WAS the moon, thinking it was a cloud that just happened to be in a perfect circle (dur!)
Here’s my best close up. We were treated to a beautiful pink orb.
Because it was so barely there (isn’t this moon supposed to be 30 percent brighter than normal? It sure wasn’t putting that face on for us tonight) I had to drop down the shutter speed to get in more light , which means the moon has some movement so it’s not as completely crisp as I would have preferred (darn atmosphere!). But the purpose of tonight’s trip was to capture the horizon illusion, and I think I did – that was fun! In this one, notice Reser Stadium in the lower left corner.
Here’s a bunch o cold crazies!
this camera 