Just in case you missed the lunar eclipse on March 3, 2007, below is a collage of images that we took by the East River. The images start after the eclipse - when the moon has turned red and is coming out of Earth's shadow. The images were all hand held, supported by park bench (heh - forgot the tripod :-)) and shutter varies from 1/4 (yes...) to 1/300 second. ( Thank goodness for image stabilization - Canon S3 IS! Due to a defective Kingston memory card, shooting was accomplished using the 16 MB card that came with the camera - so resolution is not as good as it could have been. )
Question - why is the
moon red? Hint #1 - Moon is being illuminated by sunlight passing
through the Earth's atmosphere. Hint #2 - Why is the sky
blue? If these hints don't provide the answer, see below.
First two rows of "Moons" were exposed to show the eclipsed part of the
moon.
The other images were exposed to show the fully sunlit part part of the
moon.
Buildings you see in picture on the right are on Roosevelt
Island.
Pictures were taken in Manhattan, NY around 64th Street on the
esplanade by the East River
Answer
-
The light we see on the moon is from illumination by the Sun. When
(most of the) light hits the moon directly, we see white light bouncing
off. In a lunar eclipse, the only source of light on the
Moon is light from the Sun being filtered by the Earth's
atmosphere. If you think of white light split up, you think of a
rainbow. Blue (high frequency) is on one side and Red (lowest visible
frequency) on the other. When light passes through the Earth's
atmosphere, higher
frequency light (blue) is scattered in all directions.
Lower
frequency light (red) is scattered significantly less and passes
through. A much
higher proportion of red light gets through than blue light (this
applies to the colors in between). So the earth's atmosphere
filters the
sunlight and that is what makes the moon red in a lunar eclipse - as
well as making the sky blue - and that is why when the sun hangs low on
the horizon, it may appear red. In case you would like further
explanation, visit this site.
For more information, I suggest searching using the keywords Rayleigh scattering
Nuclear Turtle
~Harriet & Elmo~
Old pic - Their shells no longer have algae all over and shell coloring has improved significantly since their living conditions improved.
They now have almost the full surface of a 55 gallon (4' x 1') tank - they walk on an "egg carton" style light grid
held up by acrylic posts over the water, with a little little deck into the
water*. They happily walk back and forth between the dark side of the tank
to the light side (where they bask) and take occassional dips into the water.
Since the turtles are so buoyant they are no threat to the goldfish and plecos living underneath,
except when the fish come too close to the turtle's flailing feet. Well even if they could sink down,
they wouldn't be a threat to the fish since these turtles are so gentle and would give the fish plently of warning
before they take a taste.
Box turtles are so not designed to swim but they love to do so anyway - they look so incredibly
clumsy in the water but get around quite well.
Oh yeah, don't let the names fool you - not long ago we found out that one-eyed Elmo is a girl, as she was laying eggs all over the place...
Coming soon - more pictures and pictures of Shadow & Chance - two red ear sliders that I've had for over 30 years...
*- This is a great way to maximize space for water and land occupants of a tank. In some ways it makes things easier to clean, as the turtles leftovers and waste pretty much falls into the water where the fish, eh, clean it up (and becomes bio-available to the plants that survive the goldfish). In some ways it makes cleaning a bit more difficult as ocassionally things get stuck in the approx 1" openings. While Acrylic rods work OK as vertical supports, horizontal has too much sag (I only want support at the ends and 4' is admittly a long distance not to have support in the middle) and a more sturdy material is in order - maybe eventually I'll change. Still the Acrylic works) The rods and deck are all held together by nylon cable ties. The deck is a small piece of the "egg crate" plastic with the cable ties put on so that it dips into the water with a lot of play. The tank water is filtered using external power filter (Rena Filstar XP2 - scrubbing stage omitted - Use some left over Aqua Clean sponges in the first stage - works pretty well) with inlet tube loosely connected to on side of an undergravel filter. The other side of the filter is bubbled with a very short tube with tube cover sealed and very small holes drilled near top (to compensate for approx 3/4 height water level - ) and a bunch of decorative bubblers. The bubblers are run by Rena Air 400 (which while pretty quiet, I'm not too happy with; tried a variety of air pumps and I still haven't found a good quiet air pump that I'm satisfied with yet)
-------
To contact the webmaster, send an email to web@nuclearturtle.com