Thursday, July 17, 2008

Thunder Moon

According to SpaceWeather.com, that is what tonight's full moon is called, for its association with summer thunderstorms. I guess the idea of "naming" full moons seems a little silly to me, but it it what it is. SpaceWeather frequently has links to amateur photography and art submitted by readers. There was a link today to a pastel sketch by Mark Seibold of Portland, Oregon that I really liked:

See, because Oregon is such a high-elevation state, we're much closer to the moon, so it looks ever so much bigger...

Yeah, Yeah, ever so much B.S., but it is a nice picture.

SpaceWeather is primarily concerned with near-earth conditions, solar wind, aurorae, and so on, but they do a good job of keeping you up to date on other astronomical news and viewing opportunities. Yesterday they pointed out that they had a satellite tracking page, where you can find where and when bright satellites such as the International Space Station will be visible from your location. Just go to this page, enter your US Zip or Canadian postal code (they also have a page linked here for locations outside the US and Canada), and it will send you to a page with info on when and where to look, and how long the satellite will be visible. Keep in mind that the new date starts at midnight.

2 comments:

markscosmiclight said...

Dear Lockwood, thank you for utilizing my lunar sketch in your blog regarding the Thunder Zone Moon.
I was not aware of this posting until I just found it this morning on March 3rd 2020. Also thank you for alerting me that it was published in NASA Spaceweather, as I had forgotten this. The famous astronomy magazine sky & Telescope is requesting to publish one of my past awarded sketches from 2009 in the Cloudy Nights Sketch Forums competition. That particular sketch was never completed of the waning near full moon so I've just completed it in the last few weeks in January 2020 by adding the natural geological colors to the lunar features. The sketch will be published in the May 2020 issue of the S&T gallery. You can see its progression displayed in my current timeline of my Mark Seibold Facebook.

markscosmiclight said...

Thanks for posting my art, and your great write-up, Lockwood. I apologize for such a late response after 12 years.