UKH

As per the Thread Title really, just have a look at the photos and decide for yourself:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-66662857

In reply to FactorXXX:

What are you suggesting? They're photoshoped? Some of them i like, the Athens one is a bit close up for me.  Mostly they're taken with very large lenses. I guess they're not what most people would experience if they looked into the sky last night. 

My attempt from Zaragoza, with a 105mm lens. 

In reply to FactorXXX:

Do you think the moon has been artificially enlarged in these photos? If so, I think you're mistaken. They're not 'bonkers', they've just been taken with a long lens creating an 'unrealistic' appearance.

In reply to Fraser:

This - it's called foreshortening.

In reply to FactorXXX:

I got the telescope out last night and got some fantastic views of the moon . But what was much more fun and really got the kids excited was looking at Saturn (for the first time) which was just above the moon last night, annoyingly clouded over quite quickly sending us back indoors. 

The size of the moon always looks bigger when low on the horizon - just an illusion when it has proximity to an object on the ground.

In reply to FactorXXX:

it's not blue..

who cares if you get two full moons in a calendar month?

In reply to Fraser:

Whether achieved digitally or optically, the end results still look crap 99% of the time. “Bonkers” doesn’t seem unfair. 

In reply to magma:

I dooo-awooooooooooo

In reply to magma:

Exactly my thought. Just an accident of the calendar with no astronomical significance. It's all getting a bit silly with all these full moons getting names.

In reply to magma:

I think it was actually 13 in a calendar year, but you're right about "so what".

In reply to Michael Hood:

Err, ergo?

In reply to Robert Durran:

They’ve had names for quite a long time…

I think there’s been a move to be generally more interested in what’s happening to the sun and the moon in terms of equinox, solstice etc. which is great. 

In reply to Robert Durran:

The saying 'once in a blue moon' is hardly a new phrase. 🙂

In reply to FactorXXX:

The 'airplane' one seems too good to be true (though the credited photographer is a very serious person.) It's taken with a very long lens, but how would you get the timing right? Pure luck?

In reply to Rob Parsons:

Never tried it, but I’d find a spot with good scenery and a flight path nearby, set my camera up on a tripod with a massive memory card, tracking the planes by their lights, remote shutter, and simply for of loads of shots when a plane was anywhere near the moon. 

In reply to Robert Durran:

I agree.. There’s millions of them.   We’ve got Harvest, Blood, Blue. Probably thousands others. That many I can’t remember them. Totally nuts. Over the top. Bonkers even

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

One ‘like’! At least now I'm no longer alone.

In reply to Michael Hood:

Which is equivalent by the pigeon hole principle; if there are 13 full moons in 12 months, two of them must be in the same month.

In reply to Michael Hood:

Why do they only occur every 2 or 3 years?

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Pink Moon was the title of a Nick Drake album...

In reply to Robert Durran:

The names are, mostly, very old and is something replicated across different cultures.  Its just they were ignored for many years and have now become popular again.

Although the current use of "blue moon" is apparently a fairly recent mistake.

In reply to FactorXXX:

Standard long lens photography.

What I find incongruent is that the fact it's a supermoon is of little consequence to the photos, and the fact its a blue moon is of no consequence.  Nevertheless the talking point created by the event creates interest in taking and sharing such photographs, which is a good thing. 

In reply to Rob Parsons:

You can use various apps to figure out exactly where the moon will be. So it would be a case of comparing that against flight24 or similar to get rough locations. Then go out in advance to see if the flight paths make sense.

So a shedton of planning and a bit of luck on top.

In reply to wintertree:

Well put. It's an entirely arbitrary designation, like an awful lot of things people focus on, but it did no harm and caused some interesting photos to be taken and shared.

Birthdays and anniversaries aren't much less arbitrary, but the lives/events/relationships themselves are worth celebrating so it makes sense to pick an arbitrary time to do it. Wouldn't make sense to have random photos of the moon on the BBC homepage very often, but I'm happy to see them every now and again if a load of people are taking good ones for some reason, however meaningless it might actually be.

And at least the BBC explained what the term 'blue supermoon' actually means without any breathless hyperbole about it looking huge or falsely implying any real significance.

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Moon "orbit" is 29.53 days approx (full moon to full moon), year is 365.25 days approx, so that's 12.37 orbits/year.

So that's 37% probability that the full moon will occur in that part of the orbit; i.e. 13th full moon in that year.

3 years is "111%" so it'll definitely occur at least once every 3 years.

Think I've got that right (apart from maybe sloppy usage of percentages).

In reply to Michael Hood:

There used to be a nudist beach at Half Moon Bay, Heysham. There would have been loads of full moons back then.

In reply to Fraser:

Wrong on just about every level.

The moon appears bigger because it is closer to us, not because of a camera lens trick, how do people still not know this - the Indian mission has been all over the news for days now, as their probe continues to steer the moon closer to the earth, it will keep getting bigger and brighter. So if you missed it, don't worry, plenty more opportunities to get nice photos in the years we have left.

In reply to henwardian:

Well of course, I thought that went without saying but clearly not! The whole point of the article was because the moon would in theory appear bigger, but the reason it looks 'artificially' large in these photos is purely because of the long lenses used. If they'd been taken with a point-and-shoot camera for example, I doubt anyone would notice any difference.

You don't really think the moon has suddenly become enlarged to 10x its normal appearance do you just because of a slightly closer orbit?

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Full moon every 29.5 days.

365/29.5 = 12.37

1/0.37 = 2.7

So a blue moon every 2 or 3 years.

Edit: Beaten to it!

In reply to Fraser:

Yes. I had to duck the other night to get past it.

In reply to Luke90:

Celebrating annual things like the new year have some astronomical significance. But I thought the millenium was a lot of nonsense. Just an accident of having ten fingers and therefore of evolution. 1000 isn't even a particularly interesting number apart from being a cube.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Aside from the current new year date doesnt really. Hence why there have been plenty of other new year start dates for different cultures. March 25th was dominant in Europe for a long time with the UK being the last holdout using it up until 1752.

In reply to Fraser:

Course I do! by the end of next month the whole sky will just be moon all over. It won't be long till we can see all the cute little rovers and American flags and stuff.

In reply to mondite:

Yes, I agree that is arbitrary, unlike solstices, birthdays etc.

In reply to Lankyman:

I once went to that beach and could have sworn that I saw Uranus. 

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Were there rings around it?

In reply to henwardian:

Glad to hear it. I'm hoping at the next one it'll be near enough for me to cut off a slice and have it with pickle on my sandwich!

In reply to Mike_d78:

No problem with the foreshortening effect bought about by using long lenses, it's more the overall end result which is often garish and not very artistically appealing.
Most of the photos are also of the same scenes taken in previous Supermoon type events and are now getting a bit cliched.

My attempt:

In reply to FactorXXX:

Interestingly, there will every now and again be two blue moons in a year. Two full moons in January and two in March with none in February.

In reply to Robert Durran:

And yet earlier you said they were arbitrary and of no interest. 😀

In reply to Pedro50:

No astronomical interest. But I can't resist a bit of arithmetical fun🙂

In reply to Rob Parsons:

I only saw one ring, and it was surrounding a black hole. 

In reply to FactorXXX:

Here in Wigan, we get two full moons in the same night, never mind the same month. Took this from Billinge Hill, looking out towards Southport. 

Its known as a 兀 Moon 

In reply to Robert Durran:

I do feel ever so slightly guilty of purposefully luring a couple of you in. It’s the fisherman in me. Anyway, maths and astronomy clearly have close links. Oh, and thank you (and Michael H) for the explanation. 

In reply to FactorXXX:

Not this week, but a previous blue moon photo from 2019.

In reply to Climbing Pieman:

Like it - that's blue all right!

In reply to Rob Parsons:

Same. It’s a stonker. BBC should simply link to this forum.  And same for Springwatch

And for those that dont frequent the photography forum - go and check out Lemmings jet photo !  

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Were there any Klingons around Uranus? 

In reply to FactorXXX:

I’ve said this before, but I still chuckle, in a totally childish way, no matter how many times…

In reply to FactorXXX:

Actually, you can’t see any Klingons due to the grape like asteroids.

In reply to FactorXXX:

You couldn’t make it up: 
Manchester Evening News: Watch the first meat and potato pie in SPACE rise 29 miles above the earth's crust

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater...

In reply to Robert Durran:

You overlook the fascinating maths at work here.  A blue moon is not “just an accident” rather it’s the mathematical aliasing between the precise beat of the lunar cycle and the jittery and slower beat of the calendar months.

Aliasing runs to the core of sampling theory, and some would say it’s a key part of prime numbers, which fall in the gaps of the beats of all the factors.  As I understands it, aliasing isn’t taught in school these days but it comes up so often, from wondering why the indicators on the cars ahead sometimes go together and sometimes don’t, to noticing how two wind turbines switch in and out of synchronicity. It’s there in so many Top Gear shots of car wheels appearing to change direction when accelerating to the rotor blades of helicopters in the movies.

In reply to wintertree:

Yes, but the calendar months are arbitrary, so maybe semi-astronomical interest. I agree that it touches on loads of good maths though. I started thinking about how often a year would have two blue moons (ie no full moon in February which means a full moon in last 1.5 days of January), but leap years make it a bit of a nightmare. Are the times of full moons spread evenly over the year? I don't know! If so, presumably you could just say that on average every 365/1.5=243 th full moon, so roughly every 20 years. But whether they are evenly spread will depend on n

Probably not formally, but I've used problems about lights flashing with different time gaps and asking when they next flash together and so on.

In reply to henwardian:

Will the earth have a Saturn like ring soon then? I think that would be quite nice.

In reply to Mike_d78:

That's better than the ones in the BBC article, seems more real. Zaragoza is a beautiful city by all accounts.

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

I thought that at least our resident Man City fan would have appreciated my efforts

In reply to FactorXXX:

That's not a moon...

In reply to captain paranoia:

No, it's the moon...
This is a B Moon: