‘Round Town

Moon dance

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 2:30pm

So I gave in. Like 6 zillion other folks with cameras and phones, out we went in search of the supermoon.

It's funny. The last time I tried to photograph a supermoon was 2011. Remember? The photo where the moon was about half way out of the ocean with a yellowish cast. I took a lot of heat for the part of the moon that didn't make it out of the ocean.

We guessed the location of the 2011 supermoon.

Lo and behold, the moon showed up, just over the north end of Inner Heron looking toward Pemaquid Point — total luck from King Phillips Trail.

This year we got smarter and called Frank Johnson to see if he could tell us the time and location of the moonrise. Angelo DiGiulian and others offered viewing locations that I'd not considered. Duh. I was a moon slacker.

Anyway, Frank gave us the time and the coordinates for the second coming.

Susan has a “compass app” on her phone. She dialed in the numbers and bingo: same place as the other supermoon — just a smidge up-river. How on earth, or, on moon, could that happen? I'm playing the lottery this week, for sure!

We piled a batch of photo firepower into the car: 300 mm lens; 1.4 multiplier; tripod; and a smaller sensor Canon, to create a 600+ mm spyglass.

The moon rose in a haze on the horizon with too much daylight still in the sky. It did seem big, but when higher in the sky, a little less super.

Not every kite we build flies well. But hey, it was a super night out on the roads. I was asleep when the moon got eclipsed.