All four images feature the same moon.
However, as is true of just about anything observed more than once, “our” moon offers an infinite number of different “faces”.
The featured image shows a “blood moon” over Perth’s Lake Monger at 9.31 pm on 31 January 2018.
A “blood moon” happens only during a total lunar eclipse.
On rare occasions, the earth is precisely positioned between “our” moon and “our” sun, with the earth preventing direct sunlight from reaching the moon.
Those occasions are predictable to us, but were unexpected and terrifying to humans who lacked the necessary astronomical knowledge
Click here for a fuller explanation, illustrated.
Shortly after I took the above photo I purchased a superior camera and lenses; if your camera is pre-2018 vintage, today’s enormously more effective “anti-vibration” technology will likely amaze you.
Suffice that I simply do not use a tripod, period; all self-taken images on Pelican Yoga were captured “hand held”, in natural light. (and I have not deployed a flash, at all, for several years. A “no flash, no tripod” policy does incur some occasional, significant “opportunity cost”, but enormously less so than was inevitably the case until circa 2018. Taking full advantage of what the better mirrorless cameras can now do will boost your mobility, save you time, and prove much kinder to your shoulders and spine)
On the first day of 2023, thirteen minutes before Perth’s official sunset, the sun had in fact just dipped below “our” horizon at Lake Monger, whilst still gently lighting/highlighting the moon’s nicely asymmetric face.
The full moon below was rising over the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat at 6.47 pm on 08 February 2020.
In February 2022 my beloved and I were in and around Denmark on Western Australia’s (magnificent) south coast, whilst a serious bushfire raged.
Thanks to the aforementioned anti-vibration technology, photographing the “smoked moon”, sans-tripod, at one thirteenth of a second, was not a pointless, stupid decision.
Musical bonus
From 1970 through 2019 the quartet Oregon was uncommonly rewarding, uncommonly difficult to describe in “genre” terms, and uncommonly stable; three of its founders – Ralph Towner, Glen Moore and Paul McCandless were “on board” for more than four decades, and their musical alliance predated Oregon. Co-founder Collin Walcott’s departure was via a fatal accident.
To my knowledge, Oregon effectively stopped in 2019.
Their 1979 album Moon and Mind was a set of duets.
The title piece features the oboe of its composer Paul McCandless, with Ralph Towner’s piano.
Moonshine was Bert Jansch’s 1973 album.
Its poignant, Jansch-penned tile piece features his voice and guitar, Marilyn Sanson’s cello, Thea King’s clarinet, and Richard Adeney’s flute. Arranger Tony Visconti played the tubular bells.