Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Lunar eclipse and solstice

Today it was the Summer solstice here in NZ, also known as the longest day. Boy was it a hot one. Windy too.
But tonight the wind had dropped and with no clouds in the Eastern sky we were lucky enough to enjoy the rare lunar eclipse.
This photo does not do it justice at all, but it's the best we could get:


Red moon rising (light to bottom left is a house)
Just now (10pm) I've looked out again and the moon is getting brighter (coming out of the eclipse), with a bright crescent appearing at the bottom right, it looks pretty stunning with the constellation Orion just above.
Should be some good photos available on the net soon.
Happy Solstice folks!

3 comments:

Heather Langtry said...

Ha ha. Red moon rising over light pollution neighbours!

Cabbage Tree Farm said...

Yep, I think we were the only house to dim the lights for the show!

Heather Langtry said...

Oblivious, no doubt! Funny, eh? These days, people either get it or they just don't get it, and they always looked kinda halfway to getting it.

We are just about done our longest nights. For us, in just over another day, the sun starts working it's way back to us. Just has to bounce between us, eh?