Moonrise over Greensboro

Last week's full moon rose early, huge in the winter sky. Here we see a view of the moon and stars sparkling in Northwest Guilford County. It isn't very often that we get to see stars in the night sky. According to Darkstar Astrology, "The full moon on 19 January 2011 at 29 degrees Cancer is trine Jupiter, sprinkling much needed luck and laughter upon us after the dramas and chaos of the Christmas holidays" (read more here). Do you speak astrology-ese? Whether you do or not, you probably fell in love with the night sky last week.

The moon is the only natural satellite of the earth and the same side of the moon always faces the earth. After the sun, the moon is the brightest object in our night sky. The brightness is due to a similar reflectance as coal (Wiki). The moon plays a large part in culture, lore, and language. To end your work week, here are some popular sayings that incorporate the word moon:

Once in a blue moon; it's only a paper moon; ask for the moon, to moon over something; many moons ago; promise the moon; to be over the moon (reference).

We're sharing this with our fellow skywatchers at  Skywatch Friday.

Comments

[Preston Earle]

Another terrific picture!

From a photography standpoint, the "reflectance of coal" factoid is interesting. There was a discussion of photographing the moon on The Online Photographer blog here: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/12/the-solstice-eclipse.html

I commented on the post: "A tip for lunar exposures from The Nikon School (circa 1975): 'It's always high noon on the moon', so the Sunny Sixteen Rule applies: f/16 and 1/ISO second exposure for a properly exposed lunar surface."

Ctein, one of the blog writers, corrected me: "First off, the moon is about half a stop darker than the ISO exposure aim point (13% equivalent reflectance), so that would make it the "Sunny 13" rule. But that would give you a moon rendered as middle grey, which would look most unnatural to most people.

"Furthermore, the surface reflectance varies considerably with phase. During the full moon, there's a coherent backscatter that boosts the brightness by nearly a stop, but that disappears only a few days either side of full. The brightness then drops off rapidly with phase, not only due to the incident angle of the sunlight becoming shallower, but the increasing predominance of shadowing on the surface.

"IOW, it's a rule of thumb that starts off leaving photos mildly underexposed under the best of conditions, and it produces serious underexposure most of the time."

David Dyer-Bennet, another commenter, came to my defense: "Well, "sunny 16" is a rule of thumb, not a law of nature. Coming close enough to nail it on the next try is good enough for digital :-) .

"The fact that we've been systematically depicting the moon as much lighter-colored than it really is is just one of those things, I guess. It's too late to change now (especially when other subjects are also in the frame)."

I think that last paragraph is particularly interesting.

[Janis]

Wow! Not only is that a beautiful shot of the full moon on the rise but I just learned quite a bit about taking photos of it next time !
We have all had some amazing sky views this week .
Wish I had time to see more but I am off to the Grand National Roadster Show for the Pinstripers reunion today and back again tomorrow.
Have a wonderful weekend!

[genie]

What a gorgeous night to be out photographing that beautiful moon. The light from it along with the lights in the houses is almost mesmerizing.I found myself peering closer and closer to see what else I could find.

[Jacob]

Hi Jan! Thank you very much for your kind comment on Florida Fotos! It's always good to hear that one's work is appreciated...

And I appreciate this post very much. Splendid capture of the moon...it has a certain aura of mystery about it; would make a good cover for a mystery novel, or perhaps a Halloween movie!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

[Sara Chapman in Seattle, USA]

This is not only a beautiful scene, but very well captured, and it's quite difficult to do. You are so lucky to have such a clear night. Here all is cloudy, cloudy, cloudy.