Moon or Sun.....?

[JohnP]

The super moon last night was a bit weird - I have never seen such an orange moon - in fact Orla commented that it looked like the sun.... Anyway hadn't planned on imaging it so all a bit rushed. Ended up taking photo through loft window balancing one legged on Sam's bed... ISO 800, 105mm zoom, 1/8 sec.... Two images show full FOV & 100% crop.. minimal processing - This was pretty much the colour it looked (sky was probably a little brighter)... It did look pretty big though at least during first 10-15mins..

Cheers,  John.

[Fay]

it was really red when it was quite low. I put a yellow filter on the scope to have a look. It filled the whole of the 6" and some.

[JohnP]

Looked really Orange to me - In fact initially when it just started to peek up I thought it was lights switching on in the distance......

[doug]

I took a similar image of the Moon, John, but I couldn`t get it right.  Like an idiot, I had the camera on manual focus but forgot, in haste, to manually focus it.  The trees were sharp and the moon was an orange blob.  Oh well, you can`t win them all .......

Doug.

[JohnP]

Because I did it all at the last minute I just left everything in Auto mode & hoped for the best. With hindsight I should have gone to manual shutter control & selected a much faster speed so the moon wasn't as over-exposed & to get some detail but then thinking about the foreground stuff (houses/ trees etc.) would have come out a lot darker... Would have also been nice to have a much longer lens so I could have zoomed in & made it larger but 105mm is the longest I have.

Oh well at the end of the day we both managed to see it & capture an image of the moment.

John.

[mickw]

Well done John, I couldn't even get the thing to focus 

[JohnP]

Cheers Mick,  I wouldn't say my focus was the best - I was hand holding at 1/8 sec.. whilst balancing on 1 leg....   

[mickw]

whilst balancing on 1 leg.... 

Careful John, you're not getting any younger you know 

[MarkS]

It certainly is an interesting colour.

There are some other pictures of the "supermoon" here:
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=23185
An interesting one shows the change in size over a 2 day period.

Mark

[Rick]

An interesting one shows the change in size over a 2 day period.

...though that one is slightly misleading because the first two images are placed a bit low, and give the impression the size difference is larger than it actually is.

[Mac]

Moon    Distance from    Angular size    difference in angular size
           earth km        (small angle    
                              calculation)   
   
19/03/2011   357577          34.9754039   
20/03/2011   361082.5714   34.63584507   -0.339558833
21/03/2011   364588.1429   34.30281605   -0.333029012
22/03/2011   368093.7143   33.9761303           -0.326685752
23/03/2011   371599.2857   33.65560829   -0.320522014
24/03/2011   375104.8571   33.3410772     -0.314531088
25/03/2011   378610.4286   33.03237063   -0.308706572
26/03/2011   382116           32.72932827   -0.303042361
27/03/2011   385621.5714   32.43179564   -0.297532624
28/03/2011   389127.1429   32.13962385   -0.292171796
29/03/2011   392632.7143   31.85266929   -0.286954558
30/03/2011   396138.2857   31.57079346   -0.281875828
31/03/2011   399643.8571   31.29386271   -0.276930746
01/04/2011   403149.4286   31.02174805   -0.272114663
02/04/2011   406655          30.75432492   -0.267423132
         
Difference in distance   49078 between perigee and apogee      
per day   3505.571429      
Dia moon   3474   km   

size change over the 1st 3 days is 0.3 seconds of arc per day,


I was going to work out the difference in size on a ccd but i'll do that a little later.

Mac.

[mickw]

I was going to work out the difference in size on a ccd but i'll do that a little later

We shall want to know the area covered per pixel at each stage between perigee and apogee 

You really need to get a daytime job