The Longest Partial Lunar Eclipse in Centuries

I love gazing up into the night sky, so when I read that the longest partial lunar eclipse in centuries would be taking place between Thursday night and Friday morning, I set my alarm to wake up so that I could take a look.

And it was beautiful! The moon was a deep orangey-red at the time I was looking at it, similar in colour to a moon in full eclipse I watched a couple of years ago. The sky was almost cloudless and gave a clear view of the moon.

My attempts at photographing what I saw were stunningly unsuccessful, however. My phone camera doesn’t do well with night shots and this was the best I managed with it:

And my camera has developed an internal twitch that needs repairing and so wasn’t much use either:

No good saying, “Next time!” as the next time there is a partial lunar eclipse this long will be on February 8, 2669. Though there will be one two minutes shorter on November 30, 2039.

I had much better luck with the Super Blood Wolf Moon in January 2019. It will have to do….

If you’d like to see some photos of the eclipse from Friday morning, you could take a look here.

It’s Still a New Year…

It’s not too late to wish you a happy new year, even though the year is already more than two weeks old. Even though it feels much older, given all that has happened so far…personally, nationally, globally. So, Happy New Year!

I watched the last setting moon for 2020 from my roof, on the morning of December 31, 2020…

I watched the New Year’s fireworks from my roof, as I have now for many years. There were far fewer of them this year, as the Covid-19 restrictions included a curfew from 10pm, a ban on parties and a limit to the size of gatherings…

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I watched the first sunrise of 2021 later that morning…

This time last year there was no way I could have imagined how much life would have changed in the coming year, the changes brought by the pandemic being the most notable and unpredictable. Sitting here now, I am very aware that I haven’t a clue what things will be like a year from now. That is essentially the case each year, but the reality of 2020 has brought that into stark focus.

I remember a speech at the college graduation of one of my children years ago, in which the speaker said that the two most important qualities we could wish for our children in the times they were living in were adaptability and resilience. So true. And for us all. May the qualities of adaptabilty and resilience be yours in the coming year and the years beyond!

Pink Clouds at Sunset

I climb up to the roof and see the setting sun is turning clouds to pink. The traveler’s palm, the water oak, the Number Eleven mango tree all line up against the goodnight sky.

The smiling moon sits behind pink clouds at sunset. “My time now,” she says….

Rooftop: Weekly Photo Challenge – Favourite Place

“This week, share an image of your happy place, a secret spot you love, or a faraway location you return to again and again.”

My rooftop has featured in a number of my Weekly Photo Challenge posts. It’s really a favourite place of mine. A large, flat, rather unimpressive concrete slab roof…

 

with a gravelly surface. But I love it for the view it provides of the world around me. At sunrise, when the chilly morning air provides a wonderful contrast to the hot tea I often drink there.

At sunset, in those serene, sometimes spectacular moments which signal the coming end to the day, whatever the day was like. In the dead of night, when the moon or a planet or a constellation of stars beckons and I marvel at how large “out there” is.  My rooftop….a nearby location I return to again and again….

Weekly Photo Challenge – Favorite Place

Took Time On National Heroes’ Day To #BigUpJamaica

There is a whole lot about our country that needs radical change and we know it. And still we love this place. Fi Wi Jamaica, the University of Technology’s “national social intervention project which seeks to bring awareness to and, ideally, protection for targeted socially oppressed groups and individuals in Jamaica”, sponsored a Twitter event today, National Heroes’ Day. 

Many individuals and organizations joined in:

I joined in with a series of tweets of my own:

If you want to learn more about the Fi Wi Jamaica project, take a look at their page on Facebook or read a recent press release of theirs, which blogger Emma Lewis shared in a post: Fi Wi Jamaica: Past, Present and Future

 

Gliding Birds, Rising Moon: Weekly Photo Challenge – Delta

“This week, share a photograph that signifies transitions and change to you. It can be the very beginning of a phase, or the very end. As you pick up your lens, explore the ways in which a single photograph can express time, while only showing us a small portion of any given moment.”

The moon has been doing this for millions of years, “rising” and “setting”, in its different phases…long before we humans were around to witness it.  The birds have been gliding across the sky for a far shorter time, but certainly time measured in many millenia. That afternoon, I watched in awe as the moon rose and a flock of birds glided in slow motion, on invisible currents, across the cloudless blue sky. Gliding birds, rising moon, a moment in time….

Weekly Photo Challenge – Delta

Sun, Moon, Plant, Me: Weekly Photo Challenge – Reflecting

“From water and glass to metallic surfaces, share a photo that captures something reflected back to you in a way that made you look at your surroundings differently.”

We see the moon because of the sun’s light reflecting off it. Tonight, the moon’s light is reflecting off the leaves and branches of the overgrown privet. And here I am, reflecting on it all…

Weekly Photo Challenge – Reflecting

Always There: Weekly Photo Challenge – Security

“For this week’s challenge, show us something that represents security.”

The sun… (Kingston, Jamaica)…the moon…(Kingston, Jamaica)…the mountains. (Blue Mountains, Jamaica)Here before me. Here after me. Security.

Weekly Photo Challenge – Security

The One That Got Away

I stepped out of the kitchen door and looked up at the evening sky. Venus shone brightly, next to an incredible crescent moon, a slightly bronze crescent against the shadowy full circle of the moon. I stood still, watching for a few minutes.

“I’d love to try and photograph this,”  I thought. An amateur photographer still exploring a new camera. I wondered what images it would be possible to capture.

“Later, though,” I thought. And what I needed to do at the time actually was important, not one of those flaky things that often takes precedence in life.

It was much later when I had the time to remember Venus, the moon and my camera. But the sky had changed by then and, even from the roof, I couldn’t find the planet and the moon.

The next evening, I looked at the sky again at about the same time, hoping for another chance. But the sky was really cloudy and though I could see the light of Venus and the moon shining behind the clouds, there was nothing that called out for a photo.

That’s one that got away. One that is imprinted on my memory, but not captured for posterity. There are moments like that, fleeting, stunning in their beauty. They may not stand still long enough to be caught on camera, but a pause to recognise and enjoy them can be exquisite and enough.

Supermoon, A Few Hours Early

Tomorrow there will be a supermoon in the sky and the best views might be tomorrow morning. But perhaps there will be clouds covering the moon; perhaps there will be rain. So, I climbed the steep spiral staircase onto the roof tonight and sat and looked at the moon. She was beautiful. I know it is unscientific to anthropomorphise (or personify?), but so be it. She was beautiful. I took some photographs. The roofing gravel pressed into my elbows and arms, as I lay flat, adjusting the camera on its tiny tripod. They say we humans have landed on her surface, have walked around on moondust. You wouldn’t know it from this far away. The last time the moon was this close to Earth was in 1948 and the next time will be in 2034. I wasn’t here for the last one and who knows if I will be around for the next? Goodnight, moon!