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We’ve had two recent Super Moons, both of which I missed because of cloudy skies. That made me look back at old files which showed I didn’t have any pictures of Super Moons—at least none worth showing. I also recently missed opportunities to see the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) from Oregon. Again I din’t have any aurora pictures. I have seen the Northern Lights once from a commercial flight passing over Idaho on a trip from Albuquerque to Portland. No photos of that either. I did find some photos of sky phenomenon that I thought might be worth sharing. Some of these (or similar shots to these) might have been shown before, but most go back a few years. I’ll group the sky show into Sun, Rainbows, Moon, and Clouds. Hope you enjoy the views.
THE SUN, Sol, our nearest star, dominates our skies and our lives. But it is hard to photograph without special equipment or special conditions. I’ve managed to pull out a few examples of my photographs of the sun.
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| October 1978 solar eclipse taken from a farmer's field near Bigg's Junction, OR. A photo of mine from this shoot was published in Sky and Telescope Magazine. |
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| Sun with a halo of light reflected off high altitude ice crystals. Photo taken on a dirty iPhone. |
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| August 2017 solar eclipse from Salem, OR. |
SUNSETS
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| Mt Hood with alpenglow. |
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| Taft beach Lincoln City, OR. |
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| Illusion of a double sun, Orkney Islands, Scotland. |
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| Illusion of a flat sun caused by the sun's rays having to go through more layers of atmosphere as it approached the horizon. West coast, WA state. |
RAINBOWS are probably the most common of sky phenomenon to be photographed. Sunlight filtered through raindrops are always a wonder to behold.
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| Sept 2012 Scotland |
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| Balkaneil Beach, northwest Scotland |
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| Near Tain, east coast of Scotland. |
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| Besides a halo the sun can also create sun bows and other effects. |
DOUBLE YOUR FUN
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| When double rainbows are created the secondary rainbow reverses the colors of the first (ROY G BIV - VIB G YOR). St Fillan GC, Scotland. |
THE MOON is the earth’s only permanent natural satellite, though we get an occasional astroid visitor which hangs around for a while. The second brightest object in the sky, the moon dominates our night sky and is easier to photograph than the sun.
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| 2014 lunar eclipse in BW. |
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| Lunar eclipse with nearby Venus. Nearby only in astronomical terms. |
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| A very new new moon. Sept 2017. From Santa Fe, NM. |
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| The new moon with the old moon in her arms. From either Dejection: An Ode by Samuel Taylor Coleridge or the early English Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens. |
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| Old and new moon with Jupiter. |
CLOUDS can make a sunny day dull, but they can also be spectacular in the sky. For the photographer a cloudy sky is almost always preferable to a bright blue sky.
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| Near Durness, northwest Scotland. |
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| Mammatus clouds are usually a sign of severe weather, such as thunderstorms, heavy rain, and lightning. |
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| Clouds, rain, and the Taos mountains, 2015. |
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| Colorful clouds make the sunset. |
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| Abstract clouds. |
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| 4000 year old standing stone and clouds, Orkney Islands, Scotland. |
NOTE: Please let me know if this kind of blog is worth your time viewing--I enjoy producing them, but I’d like to know if you like viewing them.
