A kind of success

As I mentioned in my first post, I've been trying to get a shot with a plane crossing in front of the moon for a long time. When I shot this picture, however, I was looking for a photograph of the moon and colorful fall leaves.



There's a connection between the plane and the glider (in a large image you can actually see the tow line), just as there is a connection between the earth and the moon (think tides).

This is a cropped shot of the glider passing in front of the moon.



By the way, I just noticed that I've been publishing this blog for one year. Happy blog birthday to me.

moon and clouds

I was trying to take photographs of the crescent moon with earthshine through my telescope, but the moon disappeared behind a cloud bank. I took this picture when the moon peeked out for a minute.



I like the pink clouds lit by the setting sun. My exposure was 1/320th at f6.

This second photo was taken a little while later. There is still some light in the sky, but not on the clouds. This photo was taken at 1/160th. By the way, if you ever want to find out the times of moonrise and moonset (or sunrise and sunset) for your location, check out the U.S. Naval Observatory site: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.php




Right after taking the first photo, I aimed the telescope at a jet plane with its contrail lit by the setting sun.



Now if I had the moon and plane in the same frame, that would be a good picture. I'm still trying for that photograph.

Night moves

There's a lot of movement in this photograph, if you look carefully.

The picture was taken at 1:16 a.m. The exposure was 30 seconds at f5. The long exposure allowed the moonlight to illuminate the grass and clouds. The moving clouds were blurred in the long exposure, as were the leaves on the top of the tree at right.

The long exposure and the rotation of the earth also caused the stars to trail; they are elongated instead of being points. An even longer exposure would leave longer streaks or trails as the stars moved across the sky.

The constellation Orion is visible at the top of the frame. Orion is a winter constellation that can be seen late at night (or early in the morning) in the fall. The reason I was out taking pictures was that I received an email that auroras might be visible in mid- to low-latitudes. I did not see any.