Blue Moon Rising Over White Rock Lake

UPDATE [August 20, 2024]:
If you have followed the news you know there was a Blue Super Moon yesterday. However, it was different from the one I wrote about below. The one last year was a monthly Blue Moon, while the one yesterday was a seasonal Blue Moon. A monthly Blue Moon is the second full moon in a calendar month, whereas a seasonal Blue Moon is the third full moon in an astronomical season with four full moons, occurring between an equinox and a solstice. Why is the 3rd instead of the 4th full Moon in a season the Blue Moon instead of the 4th? Good question! If you know why, share it in a comment.

As for being a Super Moon, that label applies to both the full Moon yesterday and the one for last August although last August the Moon was slightly closer to Earth (about 2,700 miles closer).

With the extreme Texas heat, lately I've been waiting till after sunset to take our Weimaraner, Luna, for a walk and we've been walking along the shore of White Rock Lake near where we live since it's often cooler with a little breeze coming off the water. 

I had not planned to shoot the Blue Moon tonight, but after my wife Linda asked if I would be, it occurred to me that it would be visible over the eastern shore of the lake when Luna and I were out walking. I decided to see if I could get a shot of the full Moon rising over the sailboats at Corinthian Sailing Club before our walk. I grabbed my small refractor (Sky Watcher EvoStar 72ED), my Nikon D750 and a tripod, loaded Luna in the car and headed to the lake. 

Apparently, so did everyone else. I guess the news of the Blue Super Moon got enough press that lots of other people showed up at the lake to watch it rise and traffic driving up the west shore was like rush hour. By the time I was parking the Moon was already well above the tree line. I hastily set up the scope and camera, got a reasonably good focus on the Moon and started shooting. All the while, Luna hung out with me, thankfully only wrapping her lead around the tripod as I was finishing up. 

Ironically, the shot below was the first shot I took. Of all the others, I could perhaps merge a few bracketed shots for something with a higher dynamic range but frankly this is pretty much the shot I had in mind when I left the house. 

Enjoy!

As always, click on the image to see full-screen. 

Olivia and Papa Chase the ISS and More

Last month, my granddaughter Harper and I went out to capture an image of the International Space Station (ISS) flying over Dallas. As described in my post about that effort, we were only partially successful, foiled by clouds. This past Tuesday evening, granddaughter Olivia and I headed up to the north shore of White Rock Lake to try again. In spite of being a little late getting to the lake and rushing to set up cameras, we managed to catch the last 90 seconds or so of the ISS flyover as it traveled from the northwest, overhead and down to the southeast. Here is the result.

This is a composite image created by stacking 9 images taken with a Nikon D750 and a Rokinon 14mm wide angle lens mounted on a tripod. Each shot was 8 seconds long with 2 seconds between each shot. What Olivia and I saw was an incredibly bright "star" moving across the sky, too steady and too fast to be an airplane. It appears as a streak in this image due to the long exposure of each original image; the gaps are due to the delay between each shot while the camera saved the image files. 

This photo demonstrates an interesting aspect of ISS flyovers. We can see the ISS fly by only at certain times and places, its visibility due to the viewer being in a position to see sunlight reflected off of the ISS. For this flyover, as it was traveling "away" from the sun (which had set just over an hour earlier) its orbit carried it into the Earth's shadow. Notice how the lowest trail fades off and disappears. 

Another interesting object in the sky that night was the Sturgeon Moon, the first of two "supermoons" this month. It was cloaked in clouds until just as we were getting in the car to head home so it just appears in this image as a bright glow to the lower left. Note all the people on the dock though; there was quite a crowd out that night with people all up and down the shoreline to watch the full moon rising. I wonder how many of them also realized they were getting a chance to see the ISS, too.

We also tried to capture a flyover of a satellite, BlueWalker 3, which passed over this same view looking south across the lake about a half-hour before the ISS flyover. Unfortunately, even having two cameras shooting during its flyover, we didn't capture it. I'm not sure whether it was due to its lower elevation, the haze to the south east or a miscalculation on my part about where and when we would see it. That'll be a target to try for another night. 

Thanks to the long exposures taken, the composite includes more than just the ISS and the Moon. Stars of the constellation Sagittarius (the Archer) and Scorpio (the Scorpion) are visible including Antares, the red super-giant star that is known as the Heart of the Scorpion. Here is a labeled version of the image above. 

The images above were edited to remove all the other stuff we saw in the sky that night: aircraft. The following is a composite of 12 images stacked "as is" in Photoshop. It shows not only the ISS but all the aircraft trails captured. Having simply stacked the images, stars appear as streaks and headlights and taillights of cars on the far shore of the lake appear as streaks. 

One final image, this time an edited stack of all the images, showing not only the ISS but all the aircraft trails captured. Unlike the unedited stack, in this view the sky (Moon and stars), lake and even the car headlights on the far shore are all from a single image. The aircraft and ISS trails from the other 11 images were masked to overlay that single image.

As always, click on an image to see large. 

July 2022 Supermoon

As reported on EarthSky and other sites, the full moon yesterday was the closest and brightest of 2022, fitting the definition of what is now commonly referred to as a supermoon. It was cloudy to the east when I went out to the north shore of White Rock Lake to capture it rising over Corinthian Sailing Club so initially it wasn't visible but it eventually started peaking out of the clouds, appearing very orange. Here is the shot I captured with a Nikon D750 attached to our Evostar 72ED telescope and 85% focal reducer/corrector mounted on our Sky Watcher Star Adventurer tracker. This is the result of processing 150 shots, first cropped and exposure adjusted with Lightroom Classic and then stacked with PlanetarySystemStacker to get a cleaner, sharper image.

This is a pretty crude result as I am still learning how to get optimal focus with the camera on this telescope, how to balance the tracker to improve stability and how to use the stacking software. More to come...

While I was shooting this, I had another camera taking shots for a timelapse video of the supermoon rising over the sailing club and the lake. I'll post that after I have time to work on editing and rendering it. 

Click on the image to view full screen. Enjoy!

A Strawberry Moon Over Downtown Dallas

 

If you happened to be up early the morning of June 14th, 2022, prior to sunrise, you might have caught a glimpse of the full Moon. I say might, because if you  look closely you'll notice a wisp of clouds across the face of the Moon and within a few minutes of when this was taken, the clouds completely obscured any lunar view. 

This shot with the full Moon over Downtown Dallas was taken from Winfrey Point on the east shore of White Rock Lake. I had hoped to capture it lower, just above the city skyline shortly before it set but this was the last shot I got before the clouds moved in. If only the clear view had held for another 15 minutes!

You can still catch a view of this month's full Moon (weather permitting). Just step outside the evening of the 14th after about 9:22pm CDT and watch for it to rise in the east. Even early morning and late evening on the 15th it will still be almost full (about 98% illuminated). 

If you have watched news headlines in print, broadcast or online, you probably saw this Moon referred to as a Strawberry Supermoon. In simple terms, the name Strawberry is a historical name (among others) given to full Moons in the month of June and a Supermoon is just a full Moon when it is closer in its elliptical orbit around Earth than at other times. For more information on this month's Moon, check out this article about it on EarthSky.org. 

Click on the image to see full-screen.