Lunar Eclipse

January twentieth's total lunar eclipse, on a cold, clear night, the so called Super Blood Wolf Moon. Below zero temperature, the moon at high altitude, a clumsy tripod incapable of the angle, and an adapted, low quality Minolta 210mm zoom from the 1980s on my great Olympus EM10, all overcome to capture a couple of nearly steady images at several second exposures. If you look closely, or click on the image, you can even see a few shaky stars. Lunar eclipses reveal the moon's spherical form more than our usual moon, offering us the subtlest grasp on the depths above.

August Regis Portendat

I chose not to photograph, or rather attempt to photograph, today's eclipse. A little roughed up from a work trip drive to New York, then a delayed flight that had me return to Minnesota at four ayem Saturday. The body seems to lag behind the return, so for three days after there is a sluggishness. This final day is a good day, then, for a solar eclipse. Cosmological events were often held in more superstitious times to be portents of revolution and other negatively viewed events. It's hard to say what the 2017 eclipse portends, other than my time in our woods with camera to photograph perpendicular to the rays of our sun. 

A Blue Moon

It is easy to miss what is going on in the sky, particularly if you are, like us, surrounded by trees. But this full moon, on July one, was hard to miss. In fact, it had been keeping me up at night, presenting itself in the wee hours after our nightly storms had cleared, glowing brilliantly above the southern horizon, a flashlight in my sleeping face. This July happens to have two full moons, the second of which is known as a blue moon.

If it weren't for an evening out at a friend's place in Minneapolis, I'm not sure I would have noticed the peculiar proximity of two planets fairly close to the horizon. As we sat talking about our art and possibilities, I perceived this celestial phenomenon without uttering a word. I may have missed the planets at their closest moment, but the event warranted an evening trip to the road just to our west, one that is up on the ridge and had been cleared for farming years ago.

Venus, the brightest body in the sky other than the moon and sun, is on the left and Jupiter sits to its right.

Not quite a celestial phenomenon, but the reddened light of the afternoon sun clued us in to smoke in the lower atmosphere. Originating in Canadian wildfires, the smoke arced down with the jet, creating hazy sun, sunset-like light earlier in the evening, and the low-hanging moon became an unofficial blood moon.