Tag Archives: Moon

Skywatch Friday – The Super Moon Lunar Eclipse

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An almost full moon. I took the photo on Tuesday night so this is actually waxing gibbous at 98%. But hey, it is full enough for me.

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Then this is the following morning. I got up and went out to get the paper at about 5:30 am and I had to run back in and get my camera and then I had to go across the street and stand in my neighbors yard to get away from the trees. Yes, that is part of the eclipse I didn’t hold my finger in front of the lens to fake it.

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And this is Wednesday night’s moon. Yes, I used a Topaz filter on it to jack it up a little. Jacking up is a technical term here in Oklahoma. Do you jack things up where you live?

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And this is my favorite Wednesday night moon. Yes, another Topaz filter. I love messing with photos.

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I’m taking a photography class and one of our assignments to get a photo of a flag in manual mode. Being the apple polisher that I am I got a bunch of flags flying in a good stiff Oklahoma breeze.

What about you? What have you been looking at?

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

December Skywatch 2017

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The Cold Moon from earlier this month amped up a little bit with a Flickr filter. I love seeing and taking shots of the moon. Some filters are more than a distraction, this one actually makes the moon look a little three dimensional.

December Sunrise

This is a file photo from a few years ago taken off my front yard at the sunset. I love a little color in the sky. This kind of color is short lived. I have found out that one has to act in a a minute or so or it all turns to gray.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday. Take a sky photo, post it on your blog and link it to Skywatch Friday. We never close.

Skywatch Friday – November 2017 Edition

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Well it is November and our weather up until today has been pretty mild, blue skies, and sunny skies.

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My photo doesn’t really show but we had a crystalline clear moon one night. These was a few days ago just shy of the Full Beaver Moon or Frost Moon. I love moon shots.

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My wife’s cousin’s wife (got that?) Sheri Lou has been taking photographs of the goings on around the family ranch in Western Oklahoma and she sends them to me and I doctor them up and post them and we have a pretty good partnership going on. I love the wide open skies of Western Oklahoma and the tough, big hearted people that live out there.

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We have had a few funky skies in Tulsa. Here is a few weeks ago downtown in the late evening.

So what is up with your skies?

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

 

Skywatch Friday – Gulf of Mexico Seascape

Orange Beach Sky

A shot from our trip to Orange Beach, Alabama earlier this summer for vacation. I love hanging out at the beach. What you see changes every second.

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A full moon from earlier this week. I’m told it was the Thunder Moon or the Buck Moon. I captured not too long after moonrise so it had some color to it.

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From our trip to Bentonville, Arkansas recently. They have a charming town square. I noticed this confederate monument in the middle of the park. As far as I know there is nobody clamoring to have it removed. It is interesting to me that Oklahoma and Arkansas are right next to each other and you won’t see sights like this in Oklahoma. Arkansas was a state long before Oklahoma  is the reason I am guessing. Just as an aside, Stand Waite was a Cherokee from what was then “Indian Territory” who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Confederate Army and was quite successful fighting Union troops and was responsible for keeping them out of Oklahoma and east Texas during the Civil War. He was the last confederate general to surrender which he did in Doaksville, in what is now Oklahoma on June 29, 1865. I stumbled across the ghost town of Doaksville years ago and wrote this blog post about it.

Well, I got off on a tangent. Sorry about that.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – A Noon Walk and a Full Wolf Moon

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I got away from work for a little while Tuesday at noon and drove to nearby Gilcrease Museum. I didn’t go into the museum but I went for a walk on the adjacent city park, Stuart Park. There was a sign there to be on the lookout for a bobcat and to report sightings. So that kind of perked my interest. I didn’t see any bobcats but I did take a few photos. It was very warm, almost 70. This is after being 4F on Saturday morning. Now we are supposed to have an ice storm on Saturday. Oh well, this winter if you don’t like the weather just wait a little bit and it will change.

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And then last night when I got home I noticed the moon was almost full so I got my trusty camera out and took a shot. It is the Full Wolf Moon, or almost full I guess. I love taking shots of the moon. I have dozens of them. I don’t know why, it doesn’t really change does it. I imagine I’ll be taking lots more as time passes.

I’m linking this post with Skywatch Friday. Come join us. A new link starts Saturday at 2:30PM Central Time (US).

Skywatch Friday – Pond Reflections

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My favorite go to 3 mile walking/running loop is Lafortune Park just a few miles from the house. The trail goes around a golf course, tennis courts, and a playground, and by a several ponds so there almost always moments to rest a little bit and snap a pic or two. I’m always wanting to yell “You the Man!” or “In the Hole!!” at the golfers but never have, probably never will. I used to work with a guy who when we played golf with the CEO of our employer would say, when the CEO hit the ball, “Oh my gosh, look at the ball go!!” He even said it when I hit it, or whiffed it as mostly the case. I always thought it was funny.

Full Moon

We were celebrating my wife’s birthday yesterday and when we got home I noticed that we had a full moon. So I dug out my trust Canon SX40 Superzoom and took a few pics of the moon. I an one of them through Topaz Textures and then uploaded onto my Ipod Touch and used DistressedFX to further process the image to bring out the features of the moon.  This moon doesn’t have a cool name like some of the other moons. It is called the Long Night Moon.

Skywatch Friday

Skywatch Friday – The Super Moon a Day Late

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Here is my Super Moon photo!! Actually I was a day late. I flew up to Idaho to visit my Dad in his Assisted Living Center and I neglected to take my moon camera. So I took this the day after the Super Moon Full Moon so I was close. I have a Canon SX40 SuperZoom and boy does it take great (at least I think they are great, okay) moon shots. I used to use a tripod with it but now I just hold in my hands on the auto setting a let her rip (as we say in Oklahoma). And if you know me, you know I cheated. If the skies are clear I haul out the Canon every time the moon is full and take a few shots . Of course the moon being the moon it doesn’t ever change much so I could really be cheating on this. But you know that I would never do that.

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Dad and I. I think this is like his third or so ever selfie. He has a lot of catching up to do. Not that he feels the need for it. He doesn’t understand why everybody spends all their time looking at their phones.

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This is a door wreath that my sweet, crafty, and considerate sister Ellen made for Dad. If you look closely at his US Forest Service Arm patch from his uniforms, a Smokey Bear, and a University of Idaho rifle team patch from his letter sweater. Dad had to drastically downsize when he moved early this year and Ellen was able to recycle some of the items into this wreath.

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I took a run on Idaho Falls’ river trails. It was ridiculously warm while I was there but is frosty now. Just so you know I’m going to recycle this pic at some point in the future. Idaho is just so beautiful!

I stayed in a separate room at the Assisted Living Center. I think he is in a good place. The staff is very nice and very patient and they know everybody. The rooms are nice and the food is pretty decent. They have lots of activities planned and a couple of vehicles to get everybody to their doctor’s appointments and shopping and such.

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The Falls that give the town its name are very dramatic. I never get tired of going to see them.

So we had a good visit. I got him to go to an exercise class and we both had a great time. The two instructors were very nice and inclusive and very supportive and the other students were having a great time so hopefully dad will go back.

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A cool link between Idaho Falls where my Dad lives and northeast Oklahoma where I live is that Wilson Rawls, who wrote “Where the Red Fern Grows” wrote it while he lived in Idaho Falls. He and the book are celebrated with this sculpture in front of the city library.

But I didn’t take my camera so I took the pic of the moon after I got back to Tulsa.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Weekend Update

Noooooo!!!!

Too Early!!!! We saw this last night in a department store. ugh

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Heather and I ate at a new brew pub in town Elgin Park in the Brady District. Oklahoma is slowly digging out of the dungeon of liquor laws in the country. Brew pubs are one benefit. It was just the two of us and we ordered a medium pizza. That is the biggest medium pizza I have ever seen.

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After the beer and pizza we went down to the river and walked (I actually waddled) a few yards and encountered these ladies doing an exercise class with drum sticks. I think Heather said it is called “Pound.” It looked very high impact. We got exhausted sitting on the picnic table just watching them. Heather is taking a class all day Sunday on how to be a BollyX instructor. What happened to jumping jacks and pushups is what I say. We took a water exercise class together Friday at our gym. It was fun!

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Earlier Saturday I went for a run on the river. I’m trying to get ready for the Tulsa Run 15K in the end of October and I’m trying to not to aggravate a sore knee. Poor me. This is what I call hidden cove on the river. I think it is actually a boat ramp for the police and fire department. Nobody seems to know about it but me, and now you. Don’t tell, okay? Oh by the way, across the river there is my much beloved Turkey Mountain.

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And speaking of not noticing. I have been running the Tulsa River Trails for 24 years now and yesterday and just noticed this for the first time near the rugby fields. I swear I have never seen this thing before. What’s up, with me? It looks kind of amateurish and not some early day remnant to me.

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And hey, we had a Harvest Moon this week. Woopee. And a lunar eclipse. I didn’t bother to stay up and see it.

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And our refurbished library which has been undergoing a renovation for three years is going to open at the end of September. Meanwhile it has a brand new Starbucks that has opened early. Supposedly it is the first Starbucks in a public library in the US. That’s great, what would be greater would be a locally owned coffee shop.

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I went to Philbrook last week. Lots of people there so I took some photos.

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I also went geocaching in Mohawk Park one day last week. I love these old picnic pavilions.

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I only looked for and found one geocache. This one kind of had a geobeacon leading me to it. I think I had some sort of divine guidance on where it was located.

Anyway, that is it.

Christmas Moon 2015

Christmas Moon 2015

I’ve been reading about the Full Moon that we were supposed to get Christmas night. The big deal is that it is the first full moon on Christmas since 1977. We are supposed to have some weather blow in so I was wondering if we would even be able to see the moon at all but low and behold we could.

So I got my new camera out and put it on the tripod, the Nikon D5300 and went out there but it didn’t seem to be getting it done so I grabbed my Canon SX40 SuperZoom and tried it out. Even with the tripod it took a long time to get a decent shot where I got good magnification yet kept got the whole moon. This is at about x68 magnification. The camera does x35 optically and the rest digitally.

And just because it is Christmas I will tell you that I ran the the photo through Topaz Lab’s Adjust software first to bring out the details and second to give a little color range to the details.

it is kind of hard to beat the Canon SX40 for moon photography. I couldn’t make it work until I consulted Mr. Google and I learned to just put the camera on “Auto” and let it do the work. I did and it works great.

So, did you have a chance to go check it out this Christmas night?

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Skywatch Friday – Super/Blood/Eclipsing/Harvest Mooon

IMG_1565Last weekend we had the the big Moon Mania. Comprising a Super Moon, the Harvest Moon , a full eclipse of the moon, and a Blood Moon.  We had a true multi-tasking moon. IMG_1570A Super Moon is just where the elliptical path of the moon takes it closest to earth.  An eclipse of a Super Moon is pretty rare. The next one is going to be in 2033. A Harvest Moon is the first full moon in the Fall.  IMG_1582

This total eclipse was the last eclipse of a lunar tetrad a series of four total eclipses about four months apart.

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The term Blood Moon is used for total eclipses because when the moon comes out of the eclipse it is exposed to light that has gone through the earth’s atmosphere.

It was fun to watch and photograph. We were working a project for Logan’s school so we would work on it for a while and go watch the moon. Fortunately, the world didn’t end. It was all fun and I was especially intrigued with the red color of the moon on the back side of the eclipse. It was very difficult to photograph.

I’m hoping that my fellow Skywatchers took lots of pics of the event. I’ll be checking them out.

Facts about the Eclipse

Linking with Skywatch Friday