Friday, June 12, 2015

Orange Moon Slice High in the Sky

I stayed up extremely late a couple days ago, going to bed at 4 A.M. on June 9th! Before hitting the hay, though, I glanced out my window and saw a rather orange last quarter moon. Usually when the moon has an orange tint, it is near the horizon. This moon, however, was somewhat high in the sky. This intrigued me, especially considering that the atmosphere where I live usually does not have too much dust or other particles that would alter the moon's appearance. HOWEVER, I found out wildfires in Canada carried smoke particles toward the Great Lakes region in the United States, which resulted in a hazy white sky, orange-tinted sun at some angles, and possibly the orange moon I saw. The moon later began turning brighter and yellower and still had a yellowish tint before I went to bed. All in all, the "orange slice" in the sky was an interesting sight to see!

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Blog Background

The background has three Hubble Space Telescope images:

— LH 95 is a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, Dorado constellation.

— Ant Nebula (also called Menzel 3) is an aptly-named planetary nebula located in the constellation Norma.

— Egg Nebula (also called CL 2688) is a protoplanetary nebula in the constellation Cygnus.