Damn preverted moon… quit looking in here!
It’s an amorphous blob of a week for me brought on by my monthly mini-vacay from Mecca… but I think it’s actually Wednesday today, so it’s time for me to dig through the annals of my shitty photography to bring you another installment of Picture Day at The Nest! And you’re in for a treat this time, because I’m going to moon you all!
Hairy squirrel cheeks.
No, not like that…
I was reading Marilyn’s post the other day where she showed a bunch of her excellent 
shots of earth’s only natural satellite, and realized that other than that crappy picture above I took of last year’s Christmas morning full moon peeping in my window, that I’ve never captured the lunar surface on either regular or digital film. Hey, it’s not like I take a whole lot of squirrel pictures at night… and I guess it was never out while I was at a ballgame with my camera.
So I finally got a chance to reload on my archive of squirrel photography at the park Monday morning, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to finally get that long overdue moonshot…
There’s nothing more beautiful than the moon at 9:30 AM…
Yep, that’s the moon in broad daylight… which you can capture a lot more often than you might think. The only times the moon isn’t out for at least a few hours during the daytime is near its full and new phases. If you’re a morning person, around the third quarter is where it’s at for daytime lunar gazing… and that’s the phase the moon has been entering this week. I’ll admit to always being puzzled as to why you can see the lit up portion of the moon during the daytime, but can see right through the darkened part like it isn’t even there. Trying to find a scientific answer for this with Google only leads to every harebrained flat earth conspiracy theory site on the net. You know, because if the moon is really fake, the new world order would have it out during the fucking daytime in the first place…
Maybe this is why we need celestial goddesses after all…
I’ll return next Wednesday with something else from the dark invisible side of the moon. And before I go, here’s the awesome 1976 (not quite DVA-qualifying) earworm you should all have been singing along to for the past couple minutes!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
It’s weird to have a mooning while the sun is shining… maybe that’s the negation of the negation of Mr. Hegel?
Especially since the moon is usually where one would say the sun never shines!
My mum used to think that the stars “went away somewhere else” during the day, so the moon going partially invisible isn’t really such a stretch…
Maybe it really is a bad “green screen” effect. And that wouldn’t be a bad idea for the sun during summer to partially go away…
Great, thanks, now I’m going to be worrying all day that we’re all on The Truman Show.
Because of how early I head in to work I will often see the moon while driving. That daytime shot you have is quite lovely. I always think the moon is so pretty on a light blue sky like that.
For whatever reason, while trying to come up with a response for this, I was curious about what goes on with the moon near the poles where day and night last for months. Apparently, the moon stays above the horizon for two weeks at a time and hidden for two weeks at a time all year long. No matter where you are on earth, you only get the moon half the time…
Neat!
So I can howl at 9:30 am?
Thanks for reminding me I forgot to include my drawing of ES howling at the moon in this one. Dammit!
Never too late to add it!!
Then the early folks would miss out and that wouldn’t be fair. Everyone gets howled at or nobody does….. and like shit.
Yeah, I get it and shit.
You know my friend – I’ve actually seen this moon out during the day once or twice when I’ve been in my magical backyard. I thought I was seeing things from eating mushrooms. Snorts with piggy laughter. XOXO – Bacon
There’s nothing wrong with eating strange mushrooms. They’re still better than a Bag of Boogers…
AMEN ON THAT! XOXO – Bacon
I see what you mean about googling the conundrum of the part of the moon we can see through in the daytime…….I had to tear myself away from the weird websites and have decided it just doesn’t matter – it looks way cool. And in the end, isn’t that the most important thing after all? Kinda?
Pam
It definitely looks cool… like when you put your hand right in front of your face and it looks like there’s a big hole in it. How did that happen?
Nice daylight moon image! For some reason, I’ve never thought to try to capture the moon in the daytime. My failed attempts at trying to capture the blood moon last November kind of put me off of moon photography. I’ve always wondered about the cycle that allows the moon to be seen in the day. We have so many tall trees around that I only see it when it’s really high in the sky and we have clouds so often that I’ve never picked up on the pattern.
One key towards remembering the pattern is to think of where the sun must be to make us see that phase of the moon. They’re directly opposite for a full moon, which is why the full moon always rises right around sunset. The sun has to be directly behind the moon for it to be new, so the new moon rises with the sun. First quarter (waxing) will rise around noon and third quarter (waning) around midnight (Which was why this moon was still out for me to capture at 9:30 AM). These are all approximate, but a good guide towards knowing when to find the moon out just by looking at its phases on the calendar!
Thanks, I’ll have to write that down! I find things like this so interesting but I have such difficulty remembering what I’ve learned about it. The moon always looks so pretty when it sets over the trees to the west of my house in the morning but I’m never ready to capture it.
ody & biskit…..frank lee thiz izza grate shot yur dad getted…manee moonz ago, noe pun inn tended, bee for cell ewe lar…de food gurl was drivin home on de high way N de moon looked like it waz sittin on de ground…..huge two….peepulz waz pullin off de road just ta chex it out ! ☺☺☺♥♥♥
That brings up another interesting moon fact I learned a while back… even though the moon looks a whole lot bigger when it’s rising or setting than when it’s high in the sky, it’s just an optical illusion. The circle still takes up the exact same area in the sky no matter where it is…
That’s a very nice shot of the daytime moon.
A few months ago, I got some of the sun rising while the moon was still bright and the sky was mostly dark. It didn’t come out with much detail, but they are interesting to look at.
The thing about shooting the moon is you can take dozens of them. If they are in focus and taken with a longish lens, they look EXACTLY the same except for minimal differences in the phase … and in my case, whether or not you have leaves and twigs in the way. The pictures I took five years ago are identical to those I took a week ago.
I’ve occasionally seen the moon up in mid afternoon, too. I guess it depends on the light and the time of year. After I got my sunrise with bright moon pictures, I did a little research to discover what everyone else apparently already knew — that it is not the least bit unusual. Why am I always the last to know?
The lack of difference isn’t surprising since the moon does not rotate on an axis… we get the same old view of the moon today, yesterday, last year, 100,000 years ago. Maybe a new crater or two every once in a while, but that’s it. The 29.5 day period we see the moon go through its phases is how long it takes the sunlit part of the moon to make a complete circumnavigation of the lunar surface. I can’t explain the astronomy of it, but that’s how it works…
I love a daytime moon. In all my 52 years, I’ve never viewed the surface of the moon through a telescope. I think you’ve given me the kick I need. I’ll have to check out our local planetarium.
I remember having a telescope as a kid, but I don’t remember ever using it much, I think because it didn’t work right. I do remember when it was dark enough even in the city to see most of the stars at night. I had a brief fascination with the stars when we learned a bunch of the constellations while I was in grade school. Now you have to squint to even see the bright ones…
Being in Los Angeles it seems like, other than a few bright exceptions, there are no stars in the sky
So theoretically one could simultaneously moon and sunbathe? How would that affect vampires? So many questions. 😀
Hmmmm, I’m not sure if Juliette (The Vampire Maman) has read this post yet or not. Maybe she could answer that (or I could forward this to her Ask Juliette feature)….