A Red Mars and The Blue Moon Pairing

Well, the Nikon Coolpix L840 point-&-shoot camera is doing a bit better than I initially gave it credit for and Bettina has gotten some decent shots of late. This week we part-time/occasional star gazer's have the treat of seeing Mars and a blue Moon pair up and ya don't need fancy equipment to see it and even basic cameras may be able to capture it. This is a rare occurrence a of a fourth blue moon during a season (normally there are three) and a Mars opposition (when the Earth passes directly between the Sun and Mars). Another definition is two full months within a month but hey, that four times in one season sounds good!

Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

Taken by Bettina at 8:03PM 20 May 2016.

Taken by Bettina 1:46AM 21 May 2016

Mars is to the lower left of the Moon

2013_08_20 Harvest / Blue Moon (der Blaue Mond)

On the one hand, last night's Harvest, or Blue, Moon (der Blaue Mond) was quite a challenge to capture. On the other hand, the predominance of clouds actually gave us some really cool shots and Bettina and I are really quite pleased overall with what we managed to capture. We're still learning the ins-&-outs of this FujiFilm camera, playing with the settings and such but we ended up getting some nice night shots. This time around instead of showing one still and one .gif, I thought it would be neat to show some progression of the wolken as they waft past Der Mond. I'm thinkin' that if I have enough oomph this year and do some kind of Halloween diorama or set-up, that some of these pics might be good backgrounds. Anywho, Enjoy!