Almost a Full Moon!

It has been a longhand ambition of mine to get a photo of a full moon near or behind the pithead winding gear at Astley Green Colliery.  I have tried several times but it didn't take long to realise that I'd need to do a blended composite of two images to get the correct exposure and desired effect.

Astley Green Colliery has the only surviving headgear and engine house on what was the Lancashire coalfield. The headgear is made from wrought iron lattice girders with rivetted plates at the joints. It has two large and one small wheel mounted at the top. It is nearly 30 metres (98 ft) high and was built by Head Wrightson of Stockton-on-Tees and completed by 1912.

In the winding house there is a twin tandem compound steam engine made by Yates and Thom of Blackburn who supplied 16 Lancashire boilers. Its engine house has the largest steam winding engine used on the coalfield. The 3,300 horse power twin tandem compound engine was built by Yates and Thom in Blackburn.


When I got home I decided to get some (almost) full moon shots from my front garden before the clouds rolled in again.

Partial Lunar Eclipse in Tyldesley

I knew there was going to be a partial lunar eclipse tonight, but I wasn't going to bother taking any photographs because the moon was very low in the sky and I couldn't see it from my back garden. I found this strange because yesterday it had been a very clear and bright full moon for much of my late night journey home from Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire.

But just before going to bed I thought I'd have one last look from the front of my house and there it was, glowing orangey-red in the sky and rapidly getting smaller.  All plans of going to bed were quickly abandoned and I went for my camera, tripod and cable release.

I've never really mastered the art of taking photographs of the moon or night sky and everything becomes a matter of trial and error, which means taking loads of shots on different settings. I set up at the front of my house where anyone in the street could see me and although not many people or cars went past, but I'm sure those that did were thinking, 'What's this nutter doing?'.

After a couple of minutes of taking a range of shots I settled on an ISO, aperture and shutter speed that seemed to work OK.  But although the moon started off quite clear and bright, it was getting smaller as the Earth's shadow on it grew and clouds were starting to appear too.  All this made it very difficult to focus and get a clear shot. These shots don't have the clarity and detail of shots I've taken on clear winter's nights, but they do show the progression of the eclipse quite nicely.

The last shot shows that the moon was indeed almost full and that the Earth cast a shadow on it rotated.  So there you have it, the final lunar eclipse of 2019 as seen from Tyldesley in Greater Manchester.

Spring Equinox Supermoon

Having failed miserably to get an acceptable photo of Astley Colliery with the supermoon in the background tonight, I've had to settle for just the moon on its own. Moonshots always look better with some foreground interest, like a building, mountain or E.T. riding a bike and full moons tend to look rather flat not having as much contrast as partial moons as there are no shadows.

But hey-ho, it's the last supermoon of 2019 (there have been two others already) and it's on the spring equinox. The combination of these two events won't happen again for another 11 years.

'A supermoon is a full moon that has reached the closest point to Earth in its monthly elliptical orbit around the planet. As such, supermoons can appear to be larger and brighter in the night sky.'

'March’s full moon is sometimes called the “worm moon,” because according to folklore tradition, it occurs at a time when the frosty ground is melting and earthworms start to emerge.'

Ain't the internet a wonderful thing!

Super Blue Blood Moon - 31/1/18

It's supermoon time again, and this one is really special as it's a Super Blue Blood Moon according to the experts in astronomy.  The phenomenon hasn't been seen in Europe for over 36 years and so it would be rude not to at least try to get a photograph of it. This is first shot that I took from my back garden in Tyldesley, Greater Manchester.

Supermoon is the name for a full moon when it's at the closest point in its orbit around the Earth. This makes it appear up to 14 percent brighter and 30 percent larger than normal. A blue moon occurs when there is a second full moon in a calendar month. The blue moon isn't actually blue at all, it's just the name give to the second full moon.

The term blood moon comes from the rusty red appearance during a total lunar eclipse, when the moon is in the Earth’s shadow. The colour is caused by blue light scattering as the sun’s rays refract through the Earth’s atmosphere. In the UK this was only visible for about 10 minutes after moonrise.

I decided that I needed a local landmark to put in the foreground of the shot to make it more interesting, but exposing for the moon and the foreground is very difficult without filters or multiple shots.  So I just settled for an atmospheric shot of the moon over Astley Green Colliery, which is just down the road from where I live.

As you can see from the above photo, there was a lot of cloud about in Tyldesley, and I only had a few moments when the full moon actually appeared. Even then it was still quite hazy when I took this photograph of the full moon itself in a slightly longer clear spell later on in the evening.

Unfortunately cloudy skies limited what we could see here in the North West of England, but just as I was closing my bedroom curtains and going to bed, I noticed that the whole of my back garden was being lit up by the moon.  So I dashed downstairs and went outside my front door to take this last shot.  It was absolutely freezing!

Being after midnight actually made it February 1st, but it was still the same night and full moon!

Here's a link to video made by Michael Tomas in London where he had an incredible view of the Super Blue Blood Moon against the London skyline.  In the video Michael explains how he planned and took his incredible shots.

Click this link to read a transcript of Michael's video and some amazing still photographs.

Autumn Sun

It's not often you can take a photograph of the full disc of the sun without damaging your eyes or cameras. The red coloration is due to their being a lot of Saharan dust in the air.



And sometimes a little bit of cloud and shadow enhances the mood - just waiting for Storm Ophelia to pass by now.



If you want to know how far and fast the Sun apparently moves across the sky in five minutes, sit back and enjoy a bit of Pink Floyd in this video. But if you can't wait that long, just drag the scroll bar to the right.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3brr5u9tlge5duh/Autumn%20Sun%202.mp4?dl=0

Stills and video taken in Tyldesley this morning.

An Unbelievable Garden Tick

I've been digging a lot in my garden recently to make way for building a low retaining wall. Most of the garden is underlain with solid clay and so drainage is a problem as there's nowhere for the water to escape. Hence I've had quite a lot of standing water in some parts and this has attracted what for me is a most unusual bird to see in my garden - a beautiful Grey Wagtail. I really couldn't believe it when I first glimpsed out of the corner of my eye and so I was very pleased when I got a better look.

In fact, the first time I saw it through my patio windows there were in fact two birds, but they were very skittish an unapproachable and flew off as I got near the window. After this first viewing I didn't think I'd see them again, but in fact one bird did return on several occasions over the following few days. It never stayed very long and I couldn't get near it but I did at least manage this photograph today.

Grey Wagtails have a slate grey back and lemon breast and under-tail and a long tail. They feed on flies, insects and invertebrates along water courses and it looks as if my puddle of water was briefly a potential food source.

Unfortunately the water has now dried up completely and so I doubt if they'll return again. But it was great while it lasted and an incredible garden tick for me here in Tyldesley.