A ray of light in the mountains

On my last trip to Cape Town I connected from Robertson to Grabouw via  a back road past Villiersdorp.  It was late afternoon and the sun was heading towards the mountain on my right hand side at a speed.  Suddenly it broke through the clouds and a sun ray reached down and touched the mountain side.  I pulled over as quickly as I could to grab a photo.  It looked much better in real life than it did in the photo, hence the HDR enhancement, but I really wanted to share it with you.

Moonrise over pink clouds

Not long ago I spent a night at Angler and Antelope Guesthouse in Somerset East.  Coming out of the guesthouse on my way to dinner, the near full moon was rising in the east over clouds painted bright pink by the setting sun behind me.  I rushed back to my room to grab my car keys, dashed to the car to get my camera and by the time I got back to my view spot most of the pink had faded already.  I still just had to snap a pic to share with you.  Oh the beauty of the Karoo skies. #KarooHeartland

Christmas full moon

We spent 10 days over the December holidays camping at Vloedbos Holiday Resort in the Overberg and I have a couple of days left before heading back to work on Monday.  So between chilling in the pool, keeping the KidZ busy and doing a few chores around the house, plus sleeping a little late for a change, I haven't really done much blogging lately other than my daily posts on PE Daily Photo.  But  I think it's time to start sharing with all of you again.

A few days before Christmas the KidZ noticed that the moon was starting to fill out and I decided to check when it was going to be full moon.  Turned out that it was full moon on Christmas Day. Interestingly the last time full moon fell on Christmas Day was back in 1977 and it won't happen again until 2034.

Moonrise on the Wild Coast

I spent the most amazing three days exploring the Wild Coast recently and will still post all about it in the coming weeks.  Obviously there are lots of photos to share as well.  In the mean time here is one I took at Wavecrest on my first night of the moon rising over the river mouth at about 7pm.

Sun through the leaves

Every now and then I point my camera up into the air and capture something like this

Full moon shining

Before anybody says it. I know its not full moon at the time of posting this pic, but I took it a couple of weeks ago so its been uploaded and waiting to be posted for a while now.  I wish I had a big fancy camera with which to take a proper moon picture, but this just shows that even a superzoom amateur camera can take a moon pic if it wants to.

Slangkop

Looking up Slangkop Lighthouse in Kommetjie on the Cape Peninsula

Visit Skywatch for some more neck cranking pictures of the sky from all over the world

Old Mission Church

The sun peeking past the old Mission Church containing the Montagu Museum

Walkway remains

Nature doesn't take nonsense from us people.  Sardinia Bay in Port Elizabeth has a problematic dune that just doesn't want to stand still.  A couple of years back a walkway was built across the dune to make it easier to get to the beach.  But as soon as the walkway was completed the dune started swallowing it in until this short section was the only bit left.  Vandals, probably looking for wood to braai with, did the rest after people were unable to use it anymore.

Cracked sky

About a week or so ago the afternoon sky was filled with the most beautiful cloud formation.  Although I missed taking a picture of it at sunset, I did see on Facebook that a lot of other people did get some stunning ones.  What I did get a photo of was what looked like a crack in the cloudy sky. As if the blue sky tried to muscle through the clouds.

Reaching for the sun

There are a number of exotic trees in Settlers Park in Port Elizabeth that has been ring barked so that they can die and probably be cut down at a later stage.  On a walk through the park I thought this makes for a nice picture with the tree's branches (arms?) reaching towards the sky and in particular the sun.

Late afternoon on Morgan Bay lagoon

Angel shining

The Angel Statue in Grahamstown is an Anglo Boer War Memorial depicting an angel standing over a fallen Boer soldier.  Initially I wanted to try and get the sun on the angel's head as a halo, but I had to stand in a busy street to do that.  Looking at the picture afterwards I realised that having the sun on the dying soldier gives it even more of a spiritual meaning as well. 

Total lunar eclipse

Last night we had the opportunity to observe not just a total lunar eclipse, but also a relatively rare central lunar eclipse in which the center point of Earth's shadow passes over the Moon.  The last time a lunar eclipse was closer to the center of the earth's shadow was on 16 July 2000 and the next central total lunar eclipse will only be on 27 July 2018.

Full moon rising

 The eclipse started at about 20h22...

 ... with the moon disappearing more...

 ... and more...

... and more... 

... until there was just a sliver left. 

 I changed the setting on the camera slightly to take in more light and show the moon after the last moonlight disappeared.

The reason the moon looks red during an eclipse is because although the sunlight isn't hitting it directly anymore, some of it still get reflected (or bent) by our atmosphere to hit the moon.  My scientific knowledge is a bit limited, but the internet tells me that the more atmosphere that sunlight travels through, the more the blue and green parts of the spectrum are scattered.  The sunlight hits the atmosphere at a shallow angle and is carried through a lot of atmosphere until it’s redirected out onto the moon “hiding” from direct sunlight. The red end of the spectrum is all that can get through that much interference, so the moon in total eclipse appears reddish in colour.

This makes for the ideal Skywatch post this week.

Super Moon

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No its a ... Super Moon?  Tonight, 19 March 2011, we had an occurrence of a Super Moon.  A super moon takes place when there is a full moon on the night when the moon is at its closest point to the earth in its orbit.  Its also the closest super moon in nearly twenty years and the next super moon will only take place in 2016.  Even though the full moon looked slightly bigger than normal, it was only 1% closer to earth than it was at full moon last month and the full moon next month would be further away than tonight.  Makes sense? To me its just a bunch of howling at the moon.  By the way, I used to howl at the full moon, but I'm okay nooooooooowwwwwwwww......

The sun peaking through the tree tops

The sun peeking through the tree tops on a visit to St Georges Park in Port Elizabeth

Visit Skywatch for more pictures from around the world featuring the sky

Crescent moon

The other evening Chaos Boy asked me why the moon has a second moon on top of it. I couldn't figure out what he meant and went to check. It was a crescent moon, but the part of the moon in shadow was clearly visible.

For more pictures featuring the sky, visit Skywatch

Sunny mast

I had to go and meet somebody at the Algoa Bay Yacht Club the other day which gave me an excuse to take a stroll along the walkway between the yachts and get some pictures. And I have learned that when taking pictures you have to always be on the lookout for a potential Skywatch pic.

Smokey sun

With the recent fires around Port Elizabeth there were quite a lot of smoke around (Duh!), which meant nice sunsets and sun shots.

For more excellent shots featuring the sky, visit Skywatch.

Dias cross candle

You know when you want to take a picture of something and you have an certain image in your head, but you just can't capture it? It happens so often to me, but in this case I got just what I wanted. This was taken at the Dias cross at Kwaaihoek.

For more pictures about the sky to put some more ideas in your mind, visit Skywatch.