Post 7 - Super Worm Moon
5-minute read
"We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm." ~ Winston Churchill
"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." ~ Steven Wright (stand-up comic)
I had never heard of the “worm moon” until a friend mentioned the term, which prompted me to do some Googling. Here’s what I didn’t know…
Interestingly enough, the term “super moon” is not a technical astronomy term – it arose in popular culture, coined by astrologer Richard Nolle. The technical term of “perigean” full moon (or a moon at its perigee – closest point – in orbit around the Earth) is also open to interpretation as to whether it qualifies as a super moon.
The website TimeandDate.com defines a super moon as:
“A full or new moon that occurs when the center of the moon is less than 360,000 kilometers (ca. 223,694 miles) from the center of Earth”.
By this definition, only the full moons of March and April in 2020 would count as super moons.
On the other hand, in his article on the topic, astronomer Fred Espenak defines a super moon as follows:
“The Relative Distance is equal to 1 when Full Moon occurs at perigee, and 0 when Full Moon occurs at apogee. Any Full Moon occurring at a Relative Distance of 0.9 or greater is by definition a super moon”.
By that definition, the full moons of February, March, April, and May in 2020 all qualify as super moons (with the April moon being the closest).
Whether you consider the full moon on the night of Monday, March 9th, 2020 as a super moon or not, the Farmer’s Almanac apparently named it the “worm moon” after noting that worms began to emerge from the ground at this time of year due to warming temperatures. Now THAT’s a scientific definition, if I ever heard one….
Sir Winston’s quote above is apt because, boy, did this worm moon glow like a glow-worm moon! Mr. Wright nails it because this is the second night I went out to the hill in front of the Netherlands Carillon, and the dozens of photographers with the same idea all got the cheese that night!
[All right, all right – settle down now.…I’m allowed to indulge in some corniness now and then, so enough with the groaning and eye-rolling….]
At a friend’s suggestion (good call, Donna!), I went on Sunday night (even though the moon wasn’t 100% full) to hedge my bets. As the moon rose, it was still pretty light out, and I missed the initial rise over the horizon. There was a controlled burn near the Quantico Marine Base that contributed to generally hazy conditions that night. So the timelapse from that night only catches the moon after it was well above the horizon (and it comes in from out of frame on the left).
Sunday night’s timelapse sequence was shot at 15-second intervals, and I let it run for about three hours (from 17:30 to 20:30). As a result, I had to zoom out several times as the moon rose since I wanted to keep the city in the frame, which is why you see all those transitions and composition changes in the first half of the video.
On Monday night, I started off with intervals of 10 seconds zoomed in all the way on my lens (120mm) on the spot I expected the moon to breach the horizon. As the clouds began to roll in – and many people on the hill began to lose hope of any kind of a shot – I zoomed out with the thought that if we got no moonrise, then at least I would catch a timelapse of the interesting cloud formations. When the moon did finally appear in all its golden glory, I quickly zoomed back in, recomposed the shot, and reduced the intervals to 5 seconds.
Check out the Gallery for this post - I chose several still shots from each night to highlight the events
To give you some perspective of what the scene on the hill was like, here are some “B-roll” shots from my phone:
Sunday night’s group was rather sparse – there were maybe 20 – 30 photographers lined up (this is only part of the field).
The Netherlands Carillon in scaffolding with what I believe may be Venus at the top right (someone correct me if I’m wrong on that).
There were quite a few more photographers lined up on Monday night. I’m guessing closer to the 75 – 100 mark (again, you’re only seeing part of the field here – there were people farther down the hill on the grass from this vantage point and on the sidewalk leading up the hill).
One thing I’ve learned over and over again: always look behind you. When you’re so focused on the main subject of a shoot, you can often miss what’s going on around it. The phone camera doesn’t do them justice, but there were some interesting clouds in the sky behind us.
I’m always thrown off by how much the moon shifts from one night to the next. The red circle on this photos shows roughly where the moon rose on Sunday night, as opposed to where it’s rising on Monday night.
The D810 eagerly shooting away at 5-second intervals at this point. The auto-exposure of the phone camera makes it look much brighter out than it is.
Share! Feel free to share this page with your friends! Copy and paste the link, or use one of the buttons below:
https://www.cameralingua.com/blog/post-7-super-worm-moon
Thanks again!
