Autumnal Equinox

[gitano]

I don't know if it's living in the northern latitudes or just personal interest, but I pay attention to the heavens. As such, we just passed the autumnal equinox; that day in the fall when daylight and dark are equal all over the planet. (The vernal equinox is March 21st.) Among those things that means to us in the higher lattitudes is night that's actually dark enough to see stars. It's been several months since that was a real possibility unless you wanted to be up skygazing between 2300 and 0200.

Anyway, my daughter the budding photographer, decided she wanted to take some pictures of the rising moon. Shortly she was back in the house complaining that the camera was "Doing that thing again where it 'stays on' too long and the pictures are blurry." Grasping the 'teachable moment' I told her I would show her how to take long-exposure photographs.

Here are the results of that exercise.

The rising moon. It's actually completely dark when this picture is taken, but the moon is providing a lot of light for an 8-second exposure.


Here, a little while later, the moon is in the trees and the stars can be seen a bit better. Lengthening the exposure gives an etherial tone to the picture.


Here is looking to the eastern sky:


Here's the southern sky:


And the western sky:


Here's a picture of Venus rising over the Chugach mountains. It looks large because the exposure was 30 seconds.


Paul