Photos of the day, Sunday and Monday June 3 and 4

Last night marks the second week since the big eclipse event in Albuquerque.  That means that the moon moved to the opposite side of the playground and set the stage for another eclipse.  Last time the moon moved between the earth and sun, this time the earth was to move between the sun and the moon.

I saw a news article about the upcoming partial eclipse and moved about the house getting everything ready for this morning’s event.  There was no way I wanted to be looking for tripod pieces at 4:30 in the morning.  As projects tend to go, I ended up spending about an hour downloading photos from the memory card and then backing up the downloads.

Right in the middle of that process my wife called out, Hey, look at that sunset.

I swiveled around in my chair and peeked through the blinds and immediately grabbed the memory card and headed upstairs for my camera that was already mounted on the tripod.

Unlike northern latitudes such as Seattle or Portland Maine, one does not have the luxury of a slowly setting sun here in southwest.  You have to be ready, and even then you don’t have lots of time.  In this case I took six images in just under one minute.

The chopper entered on image 4, but in the next two it traversed the sun and it’s image was basically obliterated.

Larger image here.

I surprised myself at 4:30, jumping out of bed and shutting off the alarm on the first ring.  I grabbed the tripod and headed out onto my balcony to see if the images were worth getting up for.

I had been hoping to capture the moon set over Albuquerque while the eclipse was going on but a thick layer of cloud covered the western horizon.  As it was, a thin layer of cloud covered the moon which softened the image somewhat, but you can still see the shadow that completes the  sky show that started two weeks ago.

Larger image here

As I am posting this entry I just noticed a lightning flash as a storm is crossing the Sandias.  Hopfeflly we will get enough rain soon to keep the mountain from being closed to hiking.  Right now I can see a significant amount of rain falling on the Pino trail area heading north along the ridge.

Soon the season will start for lightning shots.