Wednesday 14 March 2012

Blood Moon Rising and The Planets

We've been lucky enough to see a couple of impressive astronomical sight over the last few nights.

We had a Red Moon rising, this is caused by the same atmospheric process that makes sunsets red. Light from the Moon has to pass through a larger amount of atmosphere when it’s down near the horizon, compared to when it’s overhead. The Earth’s atmosphere scatters the moonlight; blue light is scattered most, while more red light passes through giving the moon a blood like hue.

Red Moon on the Horizon

There are also two very bright stars in the east at the moment, which are in fact Venus and Jupiter. At the moment they are just is 3 degrees apart with Venus the brighter of the two.

Along a similar theme the ship Neptune is also in the area conducting a multibeam survey, we often see her steaming up and down her runlines in the distance.

The Neptune in the distance