Frigid Moon

The last couple of nights have been very cold, which is probably what caused the moon to exhibit an optical phenomenon known as the Corona. 

Here's the definition from Wikipedia:

In meteorology, a corona is produced by the diffraction of light from either the Sun or the Moon by individual small water droplets (and sometimes tiny ice crystals) of a cloud or on a foggy glass surface. The corona consists of small number of concentric colored rings around the celestial object and a central bright aureole. The angular size of the corona depends on the diameters of the cloud droplets - small droplets produce large coronae.

 For the same reason, the corona is clearest when the size of the droplets is most uniform. Coronae differ from halos in that the latter are formed by refraction (rather than diffraction) from comparatively large rather than small ice crystals. Reddish colors always occupy the outer part of a corona's ring. (This is an atmospheric Airy disc.)

This photo is a composite of three separate exposures to display a wider dynamic range as the Corona surrounding the moon was a little too bright to capture enough highlight detail in a single shot.

Lunar Eclipse

Here are a couple of photos of the lunar eclipse on the 10th December 2011. I didn't have a long zoom lens with me at the time so this was as close as I could get. Both photos were taken handheld at 1 second and  1/30 second exposure respectively.

Exams are starting early in January and I wont have much to post till its over :(

Lunar Eclipse

Bernard and I went on the roof yesterday night to view the lunar eclipse. It was a cloudy and freezing night. I shot some photos of the moon before it entered the eclipse phase but it disappeared behind the clouds at 2.50am. It wasn't until 3.47am when the clouds slightly cleared and revealed the moon but this time with an eerie reddish glow.  

I started taking pictures but the moon was still in the early stages of the eclipse. It vanished again at 3.55am until way past the total eclipse climax which was predicted to be at 4.15am. I waited desperately till 4.47am but to no avail. The clouds didn't clear up so I decided called it quits.

It was fun at least, although only being able to see it for several minutes. We also found out that it was actually quite nice to fall asleep on the roof.

The first photo was shot before the eclipse and the second photo was during the eclipse. I couldn't get any closer shots because I don't have a lens that could zoom far enough. I was using my Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 lens that night.

Perseid Meteor Shower

Looking up at the sky with my neighbor on the roof of his house this morning at around 1.10am , with my camera set on a tripod, we began scanning the skies just staring for any sign of the meteor shower. Whether or not it is viewable in Malaysia, we dont know, but we just kept looking, taking pictures of the sky in the hopes that one of those meteors might make its appearance in the frame.

We started talking about ghost stories because we got bored after the first half hour. The clouds cleared up and more stars came into view. There were more stars in the images than we thought we saw in the sky.

In the end, at around 2.30am we called it quits and decided to go back inside to get some shut eye. We never got to see any of the meteors and got no pictures of them in the end. Just a couple of pictures of stars and the view from the roof. :)

Maybe there will be some that will make their appearance over the next few days and hopefully I can snap an image of one.

Update: We were staring at the wrong part of the sky... we were facing west and south most of the time because the north was blocked by the house and roof so we couldnt get any shots in that direction.

Lights Out

The night after earth hour saw us once again in complete darkness as there was a power cut in the entire Lintas area due to some accident someone had with an important power line. It lasted for almost five hours starting from somewhere around 4.30pm to around 9pm. After dinner, I went outside and saw that the sky was filled with stars so I took some pictures. This is a 3 picture panorama of the sky that night. All three images were taken in 5 sec @ iso 200. It should be alot clearer if you load the bigger image :) [It also has been compressed for faster loading so it might appear more blur than the original] I also used photoshop to add more glow to the stars to make them stand out.