Look at the Moon, Look at the Moon, some birders will recognise that as a mnemonic to remember the call of Feral Pigeon, but last night the birding scope was out for a different sort of ‘Look at The Moon’ experience!
The forecast was for clear skies and the moon was full, not only that this was a ‘Supermoon’ and this April one was the ‘Pink Moon’. This name is misleading as the moon does not appear pink coloured, this is just a name. The next supermoon will be the ‘Flower Moon’ but won’t appear floral patterned! To quote from an article on this:
“It's named after pink flowers called wild ground phlox, which bloom in early spring and appear throughout the United States and Canada.
It is also called the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon and the Fish Moon in other parts of the world.”
So late evening I was outside the house pointing my trusty Leica APO 77 scope up at the sky, being careful not to give the neighbours any cause for concern!! I attached my Contax U4R compact digital camera to the scope and hey presto started to digiscope pictures of the moon. No special equipment is required, folk could do this with a mobile phone put up against a pair of binoculars.
The pictures were captured and the moons details were clear in all their glory, the craters, the ‘oceans and seas’. A Map of these features is shown below.
Even if you don’t have a massive interest in astronomy then our closest celestial body, the Moon, is definitely worth a closer look. It has so much effect on our lives: the tides of the sea and oceans, nocturnal animals, night time bird migration, and our language: lunatic, astronomical (meaning big), moonshine (whisky), month (period between 2 full moons) etc.
My digiscoped effort is shown below, why not get out and give it a try?!
