Biggest Full Moon of of the Year.....

[luckydog]

I'm planning on doin' some howling tomorrow night !!


http://spaceweather.com (http://spaceweather.com)

[fsafranek]

Mars will be up there also tracking closely.
:ernae:

[GT182]

Well, I saw some big ones last night while at the Mall. The biggest moons I've ever seen, and they weren't in the sky. :bump:

Where we are her in DE we can't see the mon when it first comes up, so we missed it. Up north we'd seen it. Usually every fall the Harvest moon was be quite a site to see. I hate living in the burbs with blocked views of the heavans and all the ambient light.

[brad kaste]

Well,...no, it's not the harvest moon that Oliver Hardy is crooning about,..with Stan Laurel hoofing it,...but still a few fun minutes in keeping to the theme of the subject.....:kilroy:

72qZZapTHFo&feature

[6297J]

Here it is above my house in London as of 18:20 GMT - she sure is big and bright tonight!

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/7188/dsc6531.jpg


Nikon D300, 300mm AF-S f2.8 - f9, 1/640, ISO 200

[Whitehawk]

Nice photo! I was out with my telescope and got a good look at Mare Tranquilitatis as well as the rest of the Moon. Mars too tho he was really just a little red ball through my 70mm refractor but still amazing to see

[Kiwikat]

Oh cool!!! I'll head out with my "telescope" (300mm lens) and get some shots tonight! :salute::medals:

[6297J]

Oh cool!!! I'll head out with my "telescope" (300mm lens) and get some shots tonight! :salute::medals:

I'm looking forward to seeing the results!

[Wing_Z]

...and, it's a Blue Moon too!

[Cazzie]

Well, I didn't see the actual Blue Moon, it's snowing here, and at LD's too, so you didn't see it either. :pop4:

But I did set up my 8-in. Thursday evening at the Danville Science Center for folks to see the best day we had for the moon and it was the actual opposition date for Mars.

Mars goes through an approximate 22 year cycle between perigee and apogee. the late apogee was in 2006, the last before that 1988. For the next four oppositions (including this one), Mars will be slightly further and smaller than in 2008 and 2006. It is at its brightest and largest at apogee oppositions. Its takes 688 days for Earth to have another opposition with Mars. After the 4th opposition coming up, Mars will begin to get nearer to earth through the next 6 oppositions and on the 6th will again be at apogee.

This is the first Blue Moon in six years and it is the coin of the phrase "Once in a Blue Moon". Anytime that a full moon occurs twice in the same month, the second full moon is called a Blue Moon.

Next month I will set up for another look at Mars slowly fading away and beginning an eastward movement again through the heavens, Venus will have risen high enough to see early in the evening and Saturn will be approaching opposition.

LD, I set up all the time on good nights, either at home or for various groups (churches, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, schools). You're probably an hour and half distant, bring you scope up to some dark skies one night. :ernae:

Caz

Not this blue moon, but a full moon I shot recently. This is shot using a simple polarizing moon filter that screws into any of my 1 and 1/2-in. eyepieces. Once screwed in and insert in the telescope, one can turn it for polarizing adjustment. I ordered mine from Orion Telescopes for around $10.00. Dang handy piece of hardware to have when observing a full moon and not go night blind. Really brings out the rays and mountains too. Correct orientation is done in Photoshop. :icon_lol:

[GT182]

Nice moon shots guys. But who's that little green fella flipping ya the finger? ;) :bump:

[Lionheart]

Gary, thats a Xenon pirate... You shot him down, remember? He has no way home now... lol...



That moon was like a street light over here in Phoenix. Great night for flying. When I flew air freight runs with a friend (passenger only) at night, when there was a full moon out, it was really odd, as you could see the Earth terrain, even far away. It would remind me of the moon, blue gray.... (No lights way out over Eastern Californa and the dunes.. ).

[6297J]

Cazzie - can you explain why this shot I took of the Moon over Scottsdale a couple of years ago is so different to my Moon over London from last night. In my London shot the Tycho crater is at 5 o'clock and in the Scottsdale shot it's at 9 o'clock (and in your shot it's at 7 o/c?). It was October when I took the Scottsdale shot so perhaps the Moon's rotation and orbit means that it is different at different times of the year but I thought it rotated at the same rate as the Earth so it always looked the same no matter where you are on Earth? Otherwise surely the 'dark' side would be facing us at some point? I don't understand :mixedsmi:



http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/7469/279878774261573419bgq6f.jpg

[Cazzie]

Cazzie - can you explain why this shot I took of the Moon over Scottsdale a couple of years ago is so different to my Moon over London from last night. In my London shot the Tycho crater is at 5 o'clock and in the Scottsdale shot it's at 9 o'clock (and in your shot it's at 7 o/c?). It was October when I took the Scottsdale shot so perhaps the Moon's rotation and orbit means that it is different at different times of the year but I thought it rotated at the same rate as the Earth so it always looked the same no matter where you are on Earth? Otherwise surely the 'dark' side would be facing us at some point? I don't understand :mixedsmi:

Latitude and longitude and the month of the year have a play in it among other things. My shot has been flipped horizontally in Photoshop to reverse East and West disorientation, so the original is at 5 o'clock like yours. North South is okay as I have an up-righting prism, but East and West are reversed in the eyepiece.

The moon rotates almost concurrently with the earth, which is why we never see the other side. Because of slight variations in the moon's rotation, we can see 59% of its surface over time, sometimes we see more of the eastern edge, sometimes more of the western edge. The moon's orbit around earyh also has a 5 degree north and south variance from the equator or a 10 degree variance overall. These is the prime reason that Tycho appears at 9 o'clock in one of your images and at 7 o'clock in another.

Caz

[crashaz]

Enjoy looking at it because that's all we will be able to do since it looks like our manned space exploration program is going to become nothing but paying other countries for taxi rides into space.

Done for my venting now until next week when I see the budget for NASA.

[6297J]

Latitude and longitude and the month of the year have a play in it among other things. My shot has been flipped horizontally in Photoshop to reverse East and West disorientation, so the original is at 5 o'clock like yours. North South is okay as I have an up-righting prism, but East and West are reversed in the eyepiece.

The moon rotates almost concurrently with the earth, which is why we never see the other side. Because of slight variations in the moon's rotation, we can see 59% of its surface over time, sometimes we see more of the eastern edge, sometimes more of the western edge. The moon's orbit around earyh also has a 5 degree north and south variance from the equator or a 10 degree variance overall. These is the prime reason that Tycho appears at 9 o'clock in one of your images and at 7 o'clock in another.

Caz

Thank you Cazzie :applause: Very interesting. And it seems almost all the Moons in the Solar Sytem have one side which always faces the planet.