Kuiper: hello yes i am a weredog
Me: What.
Kuiper: normally, i am a dog. but in the light of the full moon, i am also….a dog
Here’s [another] experiment in “astrophodography.” ? Single 1/2 second exposure using my phone flashlight as a fill light for my camera. I’ve also included a couple of supermoon close-ups! For those, I used f11, 1/125, ISO 200, kit zoom lens at 55mm (85mm equivalent.) Handheld with manual focus!! Unfortunately, we both slept through the eclipse portion of the Super Blue Blood Moon at 5 am. ??
Today is brought to you by the word “syzygy.” Don’t panic; it’s pronounced “SIS uh gee.” It means the alignment of 3 (or more) planets, and it’s a required configuration for an eclipse. The way it works is pretty intuitive for a solar eclipse; we need a planet to view it from (Earth), a sun to look at (through protective glasses), and a moon to photobomb the sun. Earth, Moon, Sun.
Lunar eclipses work a little differently; we’re the ones doing the photobombing (Sun, Earth, Moon.) With the Sun on one side of us and the Moon on the other, the Moon encounters our shadow. The reason the Moon turns red during a lunar eclipse is because tiny particles in our atmosphere scatter the sunlight. Shorter wavelengths of light (e.g. blue) are more likely to scatter. Similarly, we have red sunsets and a blue sky overhead; the closer to the horizon, the more atmosphere the light has to pass through and the redder the light. This is called Rayleigh scattering.
If you’re standing on the Moon during a total lunar eclipse, it looks almost exactly like viewing a total solar eclipse from Earth!! We previously wrote about American astronaut Alan Bean in our Great American Eclipse post (you can scroll to find a picture of Kuiper during totality in August.) Along with Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon, Bean had the privilege of viewing an “Earth eclipse” while Apollo 12 was on its way home from the Moon in 1969.
Bean said, “…we were treated to a marvelous sight never before seen by any humans. We were seeing our home planet Earth eclipse our own star, the Sun.” Can you imagine what that must have looked like?? If you can’t, don’t worry. I’ll put pics in story.
Original post: https://www.instagram.com/p/BeswxWtApw1/