The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
-Psalm 19:1

Do you know that God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash?
-Job 37:15



Thursday, October 16, 2008

The Leeward Islands missed by a hair.... Omar passes on through...

It's Sky Watch Friday post time!! Please visit Tom, Klaus, Sandy, Ivar, Wren, Fishing Guy and Imac's SKY WATCH BLOG to participate in Sky Watch Fridays, which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND!! A huge thank you to Dot, the mother of this fabulous blogging event!!! It is so interesting to see skies from all over the world!!! How truly wonderful it is to be a part of something as incredible as Sky Watch Friday! Today, I would like to share with you my sky this morning. We had an amazing double lunar corona in the western sky as we awaited Mini-Dew's bus this morning.

A corona is produced by the diffraction of light from either the Sun or the Moon by individual small water droplets (and sometimes tiny ice crystals) of a cloud. The corona consists of small number of concentric colored rings around the celestial object and a central bright aureole. The angular size of the corona depends on the diameters of the cloud droplets - small droplets produce bright coronae. Coronae differ from haloes in that the latter are formed by refraction from comparatively large rather than small ice crystals. Reddish colors always occupy the outer part of a corona's ring.
~source
I only wish that my photographs did it justice. I played with settings until I literally ran out of time. I am always impressed with coronae. Here are several different looks at it. Ours today was inspired by some outrageous fog... the thickness brought visibility in most of the area down to about 100 yards. It was so thick that I could actually see the mist in it between myself and the car in front of me and had to use wipers. Talk about being on cloud 9. More like cloud 9 was on me. The fog started to thin out as the sun started to rise; however, it's still extremely thick out there.

Onto the tropics, the Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, St. Martin, St. Kitts and Nevis Islands are breathing a sigh of relief today in the wake of the near miss by MAJOR Hurricane Omar over-night last night. That's right, the very strong yet compact Omar breezed (quite literally) right through the islands of the northern Leeward Islands, neglecting to make landfall and moving quickly on out to the great expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Hurricane Omar, though compact in size, packed a powerful punch that was thankfully missed out on by the islands. At his maximum strength, he was carrying in his swath, sustained winds up to 125mph, as a category 3 hurricane! His fast movement is a good thing. He didn't even stick around to drench the islands with rain, which is good since they are still recovering from the impacts of the devastatingly torrential rain impacts of Hanna. Interesting little tidbit, Omar is moving so fast, that he's outracing NOAA's satellite floater, which is set up to capture images of him. Wow, a major hurricane in mid-October. Crazy.

On the flip side, the remnants of Tropical Depression 16 are being highlighted as a low risk system. Tropical Depression 16 happens to be the first tropical depression of the season to have not been named. It's been an active year.

That's it for me... still recovering from my pain in the neck.

Have a lovely day,
~Dewdrop

50 comments:

  1. fabulous shots. i especially enjoyed the first one, seems like a contact lens/iris.

    thanks for the information, as always.

    see you next week. happy weekend.

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  2. I need to get myself a tripod cause there is no way I could hold the camera steady enough to capture such an awesome shot of the moon as the last photo. :)

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  3. Does that coronae come with lime?

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  4. YAY! Omar didn't make landfall and tropical storm 16 didn't get named. It HAS been a busy year!

    We've had some fog here but not as thick as you've had. ;-)
    Happy Sky Watch!

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  5. Fantastic, informative post Dew.. love the moon shots... Jane said she suffers from a 'pain in the neck' all the time.... apart from when I'm busy with Sky Watch..:O)

    Have a great weekend..
    Tom

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  6. If im gonna get mooned im glad it was by you!Lol Beautiful shots! Happy sky watch!

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  7. Nice SWF and weather post.
    Great photos as usual and very informative.

    Come visit,
    Troy and Martha

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  8. Okay chickie - you are amazing. AND you took pictures of the moon. Me too! Yours are way better though. Happy SWF!

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  9. As always an interesting SWF post. Great photos Dew :-)

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  10. Your moon shots are nice! I don't have a lot of luck with moon shots!

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  11. wow...absolutely amazing shots of ur moon

    I hope you stop by at my SWF post also in HERE. Thanks

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  12. Awesome information. Nice shots.

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  13. Great info as usual!~ Nice different shots of the moon!Mine is posted HERE. Happy SWF!~

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  14. An impressive series.

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  15. Love the shots, also the info too.

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  16. Dew: What really neat shots of the full Moon at a beautiful time of the month.

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  17. Fantastic moon shots, I love em. Thanks for sharing!

    Cheers

    http://reginainpictures.blogspot.com/

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  18. Your moon pics are terrific Dew!
    It has really been huge in the sky this week.
    Have a great upcoming weekend!

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  19. I saw it too but my photos did not turn out as well as yours ( .. I was shooting at 4 in the morning and was not quite awake! lol) Great shots!

    My Sky Watch Photos are posted Here and Here

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  20. Fantastic moon pictures! It is very difficult, my moons are always very little or too bright.....

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  21. I already had my post drafted when I shot a few very similar ones to yours. I'll put one on next week.
    It amazes me to see that you too had a light cloudcover at full moon although at the other side of the world and with many hours time difference.

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  22. Great pictures and thanks for the interesting information :) I didn't know that.

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  23. Our previous President was very fond of Corona, the eponyme beer !
    Thanks for your explanations.

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  24. I'm impressed! :)
    Fabulous!

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  25. Fascinating information and a lovely set of photographs!

    Thank you for sharing.

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  26. Oh I think you did a great job with these - softly mysterious and captivating!

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  27. Beautiful photographs... I am forever trying to photograph the moon but I'm never happy so yeh, I'll probably never post one!
    You have wonderful skills for the orb of night and I will just enjoy it here! =)
    Take care...
    ~Michele~
    Mountain Retreat- Canada

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  28. Your moonshots are stunning. We had some outrageous fog of our own in New Mexico this week - check out my Skywatch fogbow if you have a sec.

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  29. Oh my ,t they are awesome photos, and its fantastic to learn something new!

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  30. I like the last one. It looks so close. I took a picture with that ring of color around it. I didn't know that is what it is called.

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  31. these look fantastic to me! I like the different versions & views. I know what you mean about the photos never capturing the real beauty of the real thing. Super terrific post.

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  32. ooo those are errie shots of the moon, you are very talentd to be able to capture photos like that.

    Thanks for sharing with sky watch friday.

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  33. Great photos and info. Some of those moon shots look like eyes with white pupils!

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  34. Oh my these are incredible. They are amazing.

    This is #1 I do so hope you will drop by.

    http://shinade.blogspot.com/2008/10/skywatch-woven-branches.html

    Happy week end:-)

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  35. Moon shots are so hard to get, I am most impressed! Beautiful

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  36. Beautiful shots of the moon and thanks for the info.

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  37. wonderful shots i just love the moon and my camera just does not come close to doing it justice... we had a big fog yesterday too!
    Happy SWF!

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  38. Love the coronal shots. It's a phenomenon we don't get to see here very often.

    Best wishes regarding your 'pain in the neck' -- I've been there/done that, but just a few vertebrae lower down than yours.

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  39. Great pictures, with the corona. Not easy to put this right on picture.

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  40. very interesting series. thank you!

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  41. As always, a fascinating post! I am amazed at the variety of coronas!

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  42. Very informative entries. Keep it up.

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  43. Wonderful moon shots and information on coronae! Thank you!
    Happy SkyWatching!

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  44. Fantastic moon shots! I always enjoy the weather lessons too. :)

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  45. You dew a terrific mewn! Great info as always, too!
    Cheers, Klaus

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  46. Fantastic moon shots! I try every month but mine only come out if I take them during the day.

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  47. Wonderful shots

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  48. I did a powerpoint presentation about coronas once in college and one of the slides was picture of a bottle of Corona with lime and I said, "Just checking to see if you were paying attention!" when the slide came up in the middle of the presentation...the class thought it was really funny...the teacher not so much...still got an A.

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  49. I can't believe I forgot to respond to all my wonderful commenters last week. How rude of me! I read your comments as they came in... life just got away from me... ya know?

    Thank you for all the compliments on the pics and my blog format. I hope people do appreciate me sharing my passion with them. It seems that many of you do. Hey, since it's my blog, I guess I'll just do it my way anyhow! ;O)

    Photo cache, love the description... contact lens.... cool.

    OSNW3, YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED TO HAVE ONE! They are a must for any picture taker. Right, Beth?

    Beth, is there any other way?

    YEGTG,Very busy year, which seems to be fizzling out now... don't let your guard down though. In 2005, we were only at Wilma at this point, and she was retired.

    Tom, lol, glad y'all caught the jist of that one... tee hee.

    Jess, Glad you didn't mind me mooning you... several times!

    Deirdre Dewd, Amazing? Wow, thanks! You're pretty awesome yourself!

    Arija, I'll look for them!

    Deslilas, lol!!!

    Bobbie, thanks so much... shot #2 on Monday!

    Annie, I wouldn't expect any less out of you! lol! Glad you got an A!

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