I have witnessed history tonight (or last night). I reveled in the glory that was the Super Harvest Moon.
According to NASA, on September 22, 2010,
For the first time in almost 20 years, northern autumn is beginning on the night of a full Moon. The coincidence sets the stage for a “Super Harvest Moon”…
Northern summer changes to fall on Sept. 22nd at 11:09 pm EDT. At that precise moment, called the autumnal equinox, the Harvest Moon can be found soaring high overhead with the planet Jupiter right beside it. The two brightest objects in the night sky will be in spectacular conjunction to mark the change in seasons.
.This also means that yesterday was Mid-Autumn Festival for Chinese, the second most important holiday arguably after Chinese New Year. Did I remember it? Of course not. I really suck at being Chinese… So I made it up by trying to capture the image of Super Harvest Moon for posterity.
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This picture taken with my iPhod. Amazingly clear.
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Can you see the “spur” of light below the moon? That is Jupiter. Neither can I. Sorry. You just have to take my word for it: Jupiter was there. Right underneath the moon. It was so bright that I kept on asking Mr. Monk, “Are you sure it’s not an airplane? It is not moving?”
Sorry if it looks like a bullet hole on a piece of black canvas.
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This time I tried to take a picture with my Blackberry
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You can see why Blackberry is just not as sexy as iPhones…
This picture of the moon unfortunately reminds me of something that rhymes with one of the planets. Or it is calling my name to go through the tunnel. Maybe both at the same time. It is kind of disturbing to say the least…
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Since my Nikon failed me, I used my Flip video to capture the glory of the moon
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It annoyed me to no end that my Nikon completely failed me. Most likely user error but I am blaming it on the machine, like most callers to IT Help Lines.
When I remembered that I could use my video cameras for the job, the clouds came. So now Freddy Krueger can pop into the frame at any second. I get dizzy staring at this picture. Am I in a nightmare already? (3:41 am already? Yup. Better be in a nightmare otherwise I’ll have hell to pay tomorrow morning at 6 am when the alarm goes off…)
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A la Monet
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This one took the longest time to produce: I first used my Casio digital to capture a 7-second video of the night sky. I wanted to post it on my Facebook and be done with the whole thing but Facebook said it would take 76 hours to upload the file.
16.6 MB for 7 seconds of footage. Srly?
I ended up taking a screenshot of my laptop as the video was playing. Opened up Visio. Ctrl+V to paste the picture into Visio. Cropped the picture and saved it into a JPG file. Viola! Here you have a grainy picture of the moon, covered by dark clouds.
I expect either fiddlers to start showing up from the other side of the roof or the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw to materialize in this picture.
Super Harvest Moon has come and gone. The next one won’t be here till 2029. (The thought of how old I will be… STOP! BRAIN! Don’t even go there! Where was I?) Welcome Autumn because this means we can finally put up Halloween decorations and apple cider donuts are now officially in vogue.
I am going to bed. BUT not before I make it up to you by leaving you with this Harvest Moon in its finest…
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