Blood Moon Coming to a Sky Near You

September 27 / 28 sees a rare total Lunar eclipse of a Super Full Moon. The term Blood Moon is said to have come from the dull reddish colour of the Moon at total eclipse. This particular full Moon can also be known as the Harvest Moon. As the Moon is at its closest point to the Earth at this time it can look larger and brighter than usual.

Whilst I normally loath unsolicited email I was fascinated by the following in an email I received today from a Chinese company which I had used in the past:

"....  tomorrow is the traditional Chinese Moon festival, it's a big holiday in China. .... Here is some introduction about this festival: The August Moon Festival or Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the traditional Chinese holidays. It is held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. 

Chinese legends say that the moon is at its brightest and roundest on this day. For this festival, there is a very famous girl, we call 'Chang Er', she is the Moon FairyLady. The story about the lady took place around 2170 B.C. At that time, the earth had ten suns circling it, each taking its turn to illuminate to the earth. But one day all ten suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. The earth was saved by a strong and tyrannical archer named Hou Yi. He succeeded in shooting down nine of the suns. 

One day, Hou Yi stole the elixir of life from a goddess. However, his beautiful wife Chang Er drank the elixir of life in order to save the people from her husband's tyrannical rule. After drinking it, she found herself floating and flew all the way to the moon. Hou Yi loved his divinely beautiful wife so much, he refused to shoot down the moon. 

People believed that the lady was a god who lived in the moon that made the moon shine. Girls who wanted to be a beauty and have a handsome husband should worship the moon. And on this magical occasion, children who make wishes to the Lady on the Moon will find their dreams come true."

In the USA the Lunar eclipse will be seen towards midnight 27/28th and in the UK around 3.45 a.m. on the 28th. All depending on clear skies of course.

Sunset

We have had a couple of nice Sunny days here though the cool breeze has taken the edge off the temperature. Tonight I took a couple of shots of the Sunset seen from my back garden:

This one taken with the auto setting on the Nikon:


This one with the Sunrise / Sunset setting:


The auto setting is the more natural of the two.
I do like the view in that direction, looking through the delicate branches of a Silver Birch.

I needed some way of stopping me from waffling on while I am talking to other amateur radio enthusiasts when I am using our local repeater. It has a three minute time out and it caught me out a couple of days ago while I was chatting to an amateur in New Zealand.
To that end I spent  yesterday having a think and today finally decided to use the small colour LCD screen I showed many moons ago. It is plugged in an Arduino Uno. The problem came when programming the Arduino. Last time was so long ago I had forgotten how. After a lot of Googling I found the information I needed to make it show a slowly pulsing large green circle which changes to yellow after about two minutes and then to a faster flashing red with about 30 seconds to go. There is a push button to start the thing when I start rabbiting on. Time will tell whether that is enough to curb the flow of hot air.

Another Lithops

The third of my Living Stones (Lithops) has burst into flower.

They spent several days like this (two plants in this pot):



Then, finally, today they opened fully:






I've noticed with all which have flowered so far that they only open fully after they have been in full Sunlight for some hours, usually opening as the Sun goes past. To give an idea of size they are all in 2 inch (50mm) pots. I have quite a few smaller Lithops plants but I think they need to reach a decent size before they begin to flower.

Each plant is in two parts and the flower appears from the join. Those parts will begin to shrivel over the Winter. Then is the time to stop watering until new sections have grown and reached their full size / maturity.

Wingsday

Yesterday there were about two dozen House Sparrows vying for a position on the seed feeder which gave me a good opportunity to try catching them 'on the wing':

















I also had some video taken a short while ago but when I used the Canon software to transfer the files to the laptop I didn't notice it hadn't copied the movie files before I deleted everything from the card. 

Serif Affinity Photo was used to crop and lighten the photos. I also used a filter which goes by the title 'Unsharpen Mask' which actually sharpens the photos.

Monday Mystery - Answer.

Once again I am out of ideas for a new Monday Mystery photo so I think it's time to give things a rest for a few weeks while I work out a few more ideas. Here are the results for last week's Guess What.



Firstly well done to Adrian, The Weaver of Grass and Ragged Robin who decided there was a flower hidden behind the blur and are rewarded with the virtual Midmarsh Silver Star.



The virtual Midmarsh Gold Star and a well deserved 'well done' goes to Wilma who worked out correctly that it was a photo of one of my orchids. The only one in flower at the moment.





I haven't done much in the way of nature photography or even observing these past few days. My wrists and back are recovering from two days of wielding a small chain saw, hedge trimmer and branch loppers as I tried to tame my leylandii hedge which was getting out of control. At least I have broken the back of the job even if I feel as though I have tried to break my own as well.

Also, after a break of several years I am once again beginning to enjoy my other main hobby of amateur radio. I bought a new rig (transmitter / receiver) which can handle the newer digital modes of working ......

 

 ..... and am playing with that as I try to understand the 'basic' instruction book which stretches to some ninety pages. The full manual being just over 350 pages long.

Speckled Wood

There have been quite a few Speckled Wood butterflies recently around the Ivy at the bottom of the garden:










They were the ones which seemed to trying chase the Holly Blue butterflies last week.

Dog Dish Insect

There is always an added meat content in Penny's outside water dish. When I went to fill it a few days ago I saw this beasty thrashing about in what little water remained in the bottom of the dish:



It soon managed to start climbing the dry side of the dish:





I'm not sure what the round dots are near its rear end:



Nor have I any idea what sort of insect it is as yet. Somewhat like an earwig.
Size was about 6 to 8mm long.