Please check out the moon tonight. I cannot believe what I am seeing.

a reply to: MoonMystic

Cool, you may have a shot at it. Get to a dark place. Bring a camera. Perhaps you have better equipment than we did. My brother had a Samsung android ( I think) , and I have a Nikon P100.

One thing I would really like to know, is can the human eye see ranges of color that cannot register well on a CCD or CMOS, or even film for that matter? I guess I kind of answer my own question, because what we saw is not what is presented. So then the next question would be why?

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: charlyv

I suppose that there is also the chance that there was some sort of air quality issue in the upper atmosphere, perhaps a larger concentration of a certain pollutant or compound than normal, which filtered the light in interesting ways. That often accounts for colour shifts in light which passes through the atmosphere before being seen by observers on the ground.

Yes, I believe that this may be a possibility as well, but I would think that that would be a more constant presentation, like when you see rings around the moon or such, when there are a lot of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. The weather here is a bit unstable, and was very windy last night. Scattered clouds, but no rain.

I am really intrigued about this, and wish that everyone was able to see what we saw, because it was just plain weird. Worst of all, I have a huge Celestron C8 that would have been great to use, but it would have taken an hour to get it out of the box and set up. It is going up now though, since like you said in a previous post, this CME or both of them may display aurora phenomena tonight as well. I am certainly going to check it out.

a reply to: charlyv
A photo can only capture a small range of light compared to what the eye can see. In order to make a photo that comes close to how we see it with our eyes, a series of photos with different exposures need to be taken and merged together, that is called a "high dynamic range image" or HDRI.

a reply to: charlyv

The reason I suggested an atmospheric anomaly, is that it is not just ice crystals which make for interesting filtered lighting effects. If a cloud of certain pollutants was passing the area at the time, they may also have altered the wavelength of the light you saw, which would explain the colours, and indeed their transient nature. That would be different from regular upper atmosphere ice crystals, in that the effect would be relatively fleeting, things returning to normal once the pollutant had moved off, driven by the wind.

Its just a thought. I am still interested in the Aurora angle, but it never hurts to have a couple of theories around for a rainy day!

originally posted by: JustMike
a reply to: weirdguy
Probably too early for moonrise. As you doubtless know, it's different every day, but it also varies according to where you are. Check out Time and Dates [dot] com's astronomy page HERE and you can input your location and find out moonrise and moonset times.

hey, you're right moon rise is 10:45pm here tonight and gets later each night by roughly 45 minutes.
you guys get that silly lookin' upside down moon though.

originally posted by: charlyv
One thing I would really like to know, is can the human eye see ranges of color that cannot register well on a CCD or CMOS, or even film for that matter? I guess I kind of answer my own question, because what we saw is not what is presented. So then the next question would be why?

Scuba divers know this phenomenon. I remember seeing many awesome colors in an underwater reef and when the pictures and video came out the colors were terribly disappointing because I used only natural lighting. The brilliant colors you see in underwater photography have to use bright lights to make the film capture what the eye can see without the lights, but I'm not sure it's just the eye...the brain is processing the images as well.

So we can definitely see colors that don't show up well on cameras. Using the Celestron to take pictures might help capture more though, since it has better light gathering capability.

Getting back to the moon, nothing unusual about it in the SW US, so must have something to do with your location, something in the atmosphere perhaps, or auroral effects.

a reply to: charlyv

Alas, I didn't spot anything like you described. And the way you described it made it seem like it was pretty obvious. The moon was just her usual, beautiful self from what I could see. Me and my brother went down to our local river area to get away from some of the bright suburban lights. Still didn't see anything. I just use the camera on my phone for now too -- I've been meaning to upgrade. The fact that this seems to be limited to certain locations makes me lean towards the theories already presented in this thread. I've kept an eye on the local pages/sites I follow but nothing has popped up.

I wish I could have seen it though. Sounds like it was awesome.

I was going to pickup a family member at the Las Vegas airport at around 9:30 last night, and I see the moon coming up over the mountains. Holy crap it startled me, it was huge and it was completely purple. Never seen anything like it, I tried to get pics of it as I'm driving down the freeway, but nothing turned out.

a reply to: charlyv

I see colors on the dark (shadowed) side of the moon. Blues, Reds.... Sometimes it goes away and then comes back with a vengance.

Probably the CME causing ionospheric changes around the Moon, which causes re-emissions of x-ray, EUV/UV wavelengths, and those emissions are producing the colours you saw that are actually occuring in our atmosphere, just as the aurora colours produced in our atmosphere directly by the solar wind particles.
I doubt there would have been any colours visible around the Moon from the ISS, perhaps it will be mentioned, but I doubt it.

Thanks to all that posted their observations and thoughts concerning this "phenomenon". Everyone had something interesting to contribute, and some did indeed help to corroborate our experience by noticing a strangeness in the moon's image in the early hours this morning. I also enjoyed the varied theories as to what could cause such shifting colors that my brother and I witnessed, as well as explanations as to why camera's do not capture everything that we see.

After getting some needed sleep, I did a little bit of web searching to come up with anything that mainstream science had on the subject. Some very interesting data popped up concerning how solar winds actually scour or "sandblast" the powdered surface of the moon, since there is no real atmosphere to impede it, and makes for some very interesting reading:

Solar Winds can Sandblast the Moon (NASA)
Solar Storms can blast away Moon's Surface (Space.com)

The theories presented invoke the possibility that there could be a photoelectric effect on fine dust particles that are scoured off the moon's surface by further interaction with the solar wind. Further, the Earth's magnetic field does interact with the moon as it passes behind the Earth, inline with the Sun, which would occur before, during and after a full moon.
However, this would not explain why the latitude of the observer on the Earth should make any difference in the observation. Anyway, interesting stuff.

As I said before, I am in the Boston area, but my brother is further North in Salem, NH. Still, we are only 50 or so miles apart, but he has much less of light pollution than I do here near Boston. We are looking forward to observing the moon this evening as well, as astronomers have said that there is also a possibility that the geomagnetic storm will continue.

If (and a big IF) we observe anything like we saw early this morning, then the Celestron will certainly be used to get the best possible photography, weather permitting. It is equipped with a Nexus CCD eyepiece, which can also capture in the UV and IR fringes of the spectrum, so I wonder if that would help with recording at least some of what we experienced.

Thanks again ATS for helping out here.

originally posted by: GaryN
a reply to: charlyv

I see colors on the dark (shadowed) side of the moon. Blues, Reds.... Sometimes it goes away and then comes back with a vengance.

Probably the CME causing ionospheric changes around the Moon, which causes re-emissions of x-ray, EUV/UV wavelengths, and those emissions are producing the colours you saw that are actually occuring in our atmosphere, just as the aurora colours produced in our atmosphere directly by the solar wind particles.
I doubt there would have been any colours visible around the Moon from the ISS, perhaps it will be mentioned, but I doubt it.

HI,
This is a very interesting possibility, that the color shifting is actually occurring in our atmosphere, as the spectrum reflected from the moon is being filtered and polarized as it passes through an already charged atmosphere of Earth.

I love this idea, since it substantiates the observation that people in northern latitudes are more likely to see it, as the geomagnetic influence can possibly extend to Northern New England. Great post and thanks.


Added addendum:
The real science of HAARP could be of enormous relevance here. Too bad it is now shut down. They would be able to calibrate the polarization of energy directed from solar interaction with the moon with the ionospheric spectral analysis that they developed. I wonder if there are any white papers on the project that dealt with this kind of analysis. Gonna look!

Phage and Oberg. Get your butts in here. This thread oozes with free space for your excellent analytic skills.
What do you think about all of this?
Thanks.

All I've thought about the sun and the moon the last couple of days is that they seem like they're in the wrong place.

originally posted by: Mon1k3r
All I've thought about the sun and the moon the last couple of days is that they seem like they're in the wrong place.

My only reply to that would be that if they were in the wrong place, we would be as well, and that would be... rather catastrophic to the point that this would be the last post in the thread, and this one would never make it there. Hope that is wrong!

originally posted by: jaws1975
I was going to pickup a family member at the Las Vegas airport at around 9:30 last night, and I see the moon coming up over the mountains. Holy crap it startled me, it was huge and it was completely purple. Never seen anything like it, I tried to get pics of it as I'm driving down the freeway, but nothing turned out.

Post them if you can.
Make sure you use raw images, as the one's that I posted.
People with analytic software can work with that.

Thanks!

Nah, it's just the last time I saw the sun was in April...

originally posted by: Mon1k3r
Nah, it's just the last time I saw the sun was in April...

Where in Antarctica are you stationed?

a reply to: charlyv

The moon was beautiful last night, kind of an orangey glowing golden color. I pointed out how beautiful the moon was last night, my husband agreed. Didn't get a picture of it because it just never comes out the same as when you see it with your own eyes. It was about 10pm in California. There was nothing unusual about it that I noticed. It always seems to glow this time of year.

originally posted by: Jennyfrenzy
a reply to: charlyv

The moon was beautiful last night, kind of an orangey glowing golden color. I pointed out how beautiful the moon was last night, my husband agreed. Didn't get a picture of it because it just never comes out the same as when you see it with your own eyes. It was about 10pm in California. There was nothing unusual about it that I noticed. It always seems to glow this time of year.

Interesting observation that "it just never comes out the same as when you see it with your own eyes."

I wish you could have seen it the way Jim and I did this morning. I would have given a paycheck to have a picture represent what we saw. Thanks for the input.