Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Super Blue Blood Moon & Sundog

 About a month ago, when Evie and I were studying Astronomy, we happened to be reading the chapter about the moon. After explaining how eclipses are formed with rotating balls, I recollected the partial solar eclipse we had seen back in August. That brought to mind the Blood Moon Terry, Noah, and I had seen in April of 2014. We looked up my old photo which made me wonder when the next one would be. To my surprise, it was only two weeks away and it was a special Blood Moon indeed! Since it was the second full moon in a month it was a Blue Moon, but it was also a Super Moon since it was closer to the earth and appeared bigger. On top of that, the earth moved directly between the sun and moon, thereby casting it's shadow over the moon, and refracting the red light in the atmosphere, and that's how it appears red. On Wednesday January 31, we got up at 6:30am and I rushed up the hill in my pajamas and slippers and cell phone. Unfortunately this was the only photo I managed to capture. When I went back down the hill, retrieved my good camera, and climbed back up, the clouds had covered the moon.



I woke Evie and we drove up next to Stevens high school so try to get higher to view it. It didn't matter though, the clouds were the problem, not the sinking moon. It was a total bummer Evie didn't get to see it. 



We came back home and climbed the hill once last time but came up empty once again. 



During lunch that day while sitting at the table, there was a bright light bothering me from the corner of my eye. When I looked outside for the source I discovered there was a sundog! I had never even heard of these until a couple years ago, probably from my knowledgeable sister. The sunlight refracts off of high cloud ice crystals. Beautiful little rainbow too!

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