Happy Autumn Equinox!

Solar Eclipse Photos!

After a torrential downpour, the clouds cleared just long enough for me to get a few shots. Here in Western PA, we only had 80% and not full totality, but it was still an impressive sight to see! The next one is in 2024, and I will be closer to totality then.

This Solar Eclipse was in Leo... a powerful symbol of new and creative beginnings! May it be so!

Space Flight

My favorite tea (Red Rose) comes with a little figurine or statue in each box. Today, I was pleasantly surprised to get the space shuttle!

I'm finding that for all my apps, my favorites seem to be PhotoToaster, Mextures, Remix & Jazz; I use them for just about everything! I've also been using PhotoFX's X-ray effect to get an inverted image of my public domain astro art diagrams, like the one used here. Enjoy!

Constellation

Apps Used: PhotoToaster, Mextures, Remix & Jazz. Inspired by the original photo below:

Super Moon 2016

A few photos I took of the Super Moon, with 3 different cameras: a Canon EOS, my iPhone 7+, and a Nikon Coolpix. The Canon naturally has the best color and resolution, but I still need to work on figuring out how to get it to focus properly for the brightness of the Moon against the dark sky. Surprisingly I didn't have much camera shake with any of them, even though I went without a tripod.

And last but not least, a digital edit...

It's a Blue Moon...

...and my 11th Wedding Anniversary! Our actual wedding day was also on a Blue Moon, and this is the first Blue Moon Anniversary so far. Looking forward to many more years!

Merry Winter Solstice!

A Blessed Winter Solstice to all who celebrate or just observe...

Solar Eclipse: Art Journal & ATCs

Kala Noumenia! It's the New Moon in Scorpio, which is also a Solar Eclipse for those who were lucky enough to see it today.

Lyrics on the art journal spread are from Pink Floyd's "Eclipse" from Dark Side of the Moon. The quotes on the ATCs are from Rumi.

Full Moon!

"If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I bet they'd live a lot differently."

- Bill Watterson

Wishing you all the joy & beauty of the nighttime sky...

Solstice: App Recipe

Happy Summer Solstice everyone!

I was inspired to do an App Recipe for the occasion... Check out the Recipe Book Project at http://www.clearerreflections.com/ for more great recipes!

I started with another dictionary page, this time for the word Sol. (That old dictionary was the best buck I ever spent!)

I took that into Image Blender (85/15 blend) with this NASA picture of the Sun.

And then took the resulting image into Image Blender with a diagram from an old book (5/95 blend) to get this...

After that, I put it into Photo Toaster > Supreme > Heirloom...

Next, I put it into Pic Grunger > Scratched (50%, Studio Style), Iris > Surface > Splatter and Photo Forge > Auto Balance: Exposure with Frame 08.

And here's the result!

Leo: App Recipe

I put this image together while watching the Season Finale of Game of Thrones. I'm not a fan of the Lannisters (except for Tyrion!), but I do love lions.

For this one, I took a star photo from Wikimedia Commons (public domain) and another dictionary shot, this time with the entry for the constellation Leo.

I took both photos into Image Blender, with an 80/20 blend...

And then I took the resulting image into Image Blender (40/60 Blend) with one of my lion statue pics, taken with Instagram's Earlybird filter, and then put through Magic Hour's Sepia setting. (I also used Photo Forge to give it a horizontal flip.)

From there, the resulting image was taken into Photo Toaster, given a Yellow Filter, Old Paper Texture and the Funky Frame.

And here is the result...

Eclipse & App Recipes

I didn't get to see it personally, but thankfully NASA takes pics of these things!

Just recently, I found a new blog that I've fallen in love with. You can find it at www.clearerreflections.com. Dave is hosting what he calls The Recipe Book Project, where people share their "recipes" for manipulating photos with mobile apps. He also posts his own photos daily as part of a 365 Project.

For Eclipse, I took a photo of an old dictionary page with the listing for Eclipse on it, and a NASA image of last night's eclipse...

The dictionary page was taken with Instagram > Rise Filter. The NASA photo was imported as is.
Both pics were taken into Blender with a 75/25 blend.

From there, the recipe is as follows:

Magic Hour > Antique

Jazz > Sepia, Bloom, Light Leakage

Pic FX > Urban > Enhance

Photo Toaster > FX > Yellow Filter
                       > Frames > Funky

And this is the result...

Full Moon Madness!

Here's some pictures I took of last weekend's Full Moon... They were calling it a "Super Moon," but this must not be the right part of the world/time of year to see it as huge as other places did. But it was still beautiful!

As EarthSky wrote, the term Super Moon actually comes from astrology, defined as "…a new or full moon which occurs with the moon at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in a given orbit (perigee). In short, Earth, moon and sun are all in a line, with moon in its nearest approach to Earth."


For my astro-readers, this Full Moon was in Tropical Scorpio. :)