Hey it's me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. Super. Blue. Blood. Moon. I heard those words and I was like "Mmhmm, that's my life now." So, here's the deal. "Supermoon" refers to the fact that the Moon goes around the Earth in an ellipse. When it's closest to the Earth, that's called perigee, and when that coincides with a full moon, Bam, supermoon. Makes sense? Really big, really bright. "Blue moon" is the second full moon in a calendar month. A "blood moon" has two meanings. That's when the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon and the umbral shadow of the Earth is cast on the Moon, turning it red, and it looks all freaky and stuff. The second meaning for "blood moon" is when you're playing Zelda and all the bad guys that you've killed respawn and you've got to take them back down. Shout out to my boy, Link. I love that game! I have a horse named Elvis. So I live in Huntsville, Alabama. There's a re— (Laughs) —really cool model of the Saturn V rocket on the side of the interstate at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. My goal is to get a photo of the blood moon as it comes down. Bam. Right there. That's the photo I want. I just want that blood moon and a rocket. I just think it's going to be amazing, right? So the first full moon of the month, I went out there and tried my hardest to get photos. I tried to be aligned as the full moon rose, and they weren't that bad for a first attempt. But the problem was, that particular supermoon was a rising supermoon, meaning I could stand on a bridge just to the west of the rocket. Are your fingernails hurtin'? Yeah. My fingernails— my knuckles hurt too. The super blue blood moon, however, was a setting supermoon. Meaning, I had to be on the opposite side of the rocket, deep in the heart of Huntsville, with no line of sight to the rocket because there was no convenient bridge to stand on. I want to get it right. Obviously this requires math. You have to know where the Moon is setting; you have to know where you are; you have to know where the rocket is; we're talking celestial alignment. So I called in the big guns. Do you remember Trevor, from the solar eclipse? We did the math together. Three. Two. One. Transit. Oh! It happened! I saw it! So I called him and said, "Dude, will you come down here? Let's do some math together. And let's try to figure out what's going on." We used a program called "The Photographer's Ephemeris" that told us exactly where the lunar eclipse was going to be behind the Saturn V. Okay, so my buddy Jared has a drone we did the math and we figured out exactly where the Moon is going to set and how that lines up with the rocket. It's here at All Nations Church in Huntsville, Alabama. So, Jared is going to fly with his drone, and he's going to figure out how high we need to be in order for us to see over these trees. (Whirring sounds) Coming left. Yeah. The bad thing about this particular lunar eclipse is that the sun was going to be rising in the east. And the problem is, that means the ambient light was going to blow out the back, the rocket wouldn't be illuminated enough, so I called the people at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and asked them if they would turn the rocket lights on. "U.S. Space and Rocket Center, this is (unintelligible name), how can I help you?" "Yeah, we was going to cut them on about 5:00, but we can go ahead and cut them on right now, it will just take a couple minutes for my guy to get over there." The people at the church were super awesome and said I could do whatever I want as long as I didn't tear up the grass, so we had a sixty-foot boom lift delivered, and Trevor and I put on some harnesses, got up in the bucket, and aligned ourselves for the shot. When we finally got sixty feet up in the air, the lunar eclipse was already underway and all we had to do was wait for it to align with the rocket. The Moon is starting to get covered up by the umbral shadow. And at this point, we are waiting to uh— for the thing to turn red. So we can get the shots with this and that. So this is the point of this video: I was expecting a big blood moon like on Zelda, didn't happen, but what did happen is a weird, optical phenomenon that I do not understand and it's making me a little upset because usually I have a pretty good grasp on these things. I don't know what I took a picture of. There's a line on the Moon. It happens right at the tip of the rocket, when the Moon comes down, as soon as the very tip of the launch escape system, which is the rocket on top of the rocket, as soon as the Moon crosses that, you can see a line appear across the Moon. And I don't know what it is. Look, there's a line that shows up, but it stays even with the tip of the launch escape system, the very top of the rocket. So you think if you planned something for a month you'd be all excited the exact three seconds that it's happening but I was confused. Like, I thought there was some kind of defect on my sensor 'cause I could see this line and then I was like, "Wait no." I'm looking through my DSLR so the optical path doesn't have the sensor in the way; That's an actual thing I'm seeing. In fact, I commented on it the exact moment it happened. You see that line? What's that? The line? What do you mean? It's creating this weird line. The sliver of it, you mean? No, there's uh— there's an atmospheric something that's happening right where it's touching the— So this is my question, internet. I took photos of the lunar eclipse lined up with the Saturn V because I thought "Hey this went to the moon, that's the moon that would be a good photo." What, instead I got, was a question. "What is goin' on?" I think--is it a mirage? How can it be a mirage if it's at an angle? There's no cables at the top of the rocket. There were no airplanes in the area, this isn't a contrail. I thought it was a cloud but it's not there until the moon gets there. The tip of the rocket's here but it's causing a line over here. Why is it just at the tip and then what—? It's not Schlieren. No, it's not Schlieren. I don't know. So, there. Internet. I have a question. "Why is there a line on my lunar eclipse photos?" Specifically at the junction of the Launch Escape System on the Saturn V rocket. I don't know the answer. I would love for you to tell me the answer via Twitter. I have two Twitter accounts. I have @SmarterEveryDay @DestinSandlin. No this is not an attempt to get you to follow me on Twitter. I really want to know the answer. So, like, if you actually know if you could be like "Hey, I actually know." and then tweet me the answer, I would greatly appreciate that. Thank you for making me Smarter Every Day. Thanks, bye. Alright, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Smarter Every Day. That is a difficult shot, because you've got the sun coming up over the other side of the earth from the moon and so you have the ambient light on the subject that you're trying to shoot. It's a hard, it's a hard shot! Would you agree, Trevor? "I would, yes." Yeah, so, if you want to try this, I would love to see your photos. The Moon is awesome! We're going back to the Moon and I just want people to be excited about it. So if you wouldn't mind tagging me on Twitter @SmarterEveryDay any time you take really cool photos of the Moon, I would love to see your work. I'll leave links down below to all the math Trevor helped us figure all that out. I'll leave these images for the patrons on the Patreon feed. Please feel free to check it out. Feel free to subscribe to @SmarterEveryDay if you're into that sort of thing. Anyway, I'm Destin, and we gotta get off this thing because it is cold. Anyway, have a good one! Bye. "You guys have harnesses?" "We got harnesses so we don't fall out of the boom lift!" If I put this at the very end of the video, we can say "Safety Last." (laughs) We should cut this off.
Someone posted your video on the photography sub and I expected a cool discussion about the photo and the process and all that. Instead there was just a bunch of people mad at OP for wanting them to take 7 minutes out of their day. I don’t get reddit sometimes.
Cool video Destin, and super cool photos Destin and Trent.
So just to confirm the following two statements are true? It's not absolutely clear in the video.
I've looked a little to see if I can find other photos with similar effects. No luck yet, but here are some photos with similar positioning of objects that don't have the effect. They may be useful for narrowing things down. So close: http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/REU-JAPAN_1-760x519.jpg
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*_UZKXvXRX24EtW2Yz3xo8Q.jpeg
https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2015/09/933088_1_0905-supermoon-lunar-eclipse_standard.jpg?alias=standard_900x600
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/08/08/01/430E5BFC00000578-4769946-image-a-73_1502153124886.jpg
https://michpics.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/lunar-eclipse-over-the-penobscot.jpg
I'll probably edit if I find more.
One of my theories is that a double slit interference pattern is being caused by the aircraft warning light.
The wavelength of light having something to do with it might make sense since the artifact didn't appear with a white moon.
An interference pattern of the red light would also explain why it only happened in one of the two shooting locations. With an interference pattern you would have to be a very specific distance and position to get the effect to show up.
Someone on Twitter also suggesting Fresnel optics on the light could be the culprit, causing some kind of lens flare. That also doesn't really make sense because in order to be darker it would have to be a destructive lens flare. I don't know too much about optics but I don't think that is a thing. Maybe the Fresnel caused an interference pattern? Is that something that can happen?
Questions
How long was the line there? Did it stay in the same relative position to the rocket if you moved the camera slightly? I ask this because someone else on Twitter suggested an Atmospheric Boundary Layer that happened to be aligned with the light.
It's aliens.
(seriously, this thread was missing some tinfoil hat content...)
I am constantly amazed by the fact that Destin not only comes up with these ideas, but makes them happen. I don't think I would have had the wherewithal to call the space center and ask them to turn the lights on the rocket on, nor rent a boom crane to see over the trees. I don't know how he manages to do all of this while also having a wife, kids, and a regular job.
/u/MrPennywhistle, you say rather confidently that this is not a contrail. What makes you say so? I don't see anything that is evidence against it being one.
For the record, I did some math and a quick, but to-scale, Sketchup model using all the known distances involved in this shoot (including height photo was shot from, height of the rocket, the difference in ground elevation between the two points, the distance between the two points, the angular diameter of the moon). If this were a contrail, for it to be where it is in the photo (assuming a height of 30,000 ft., which is admittedly a pretty big assumption, but not a farfetched one), the contrail would need to be 144 miles away. At that distance, it would take only just over 3 seconds for a plane traveling at 700 MPH (again, another assumption) to span the entire diameter of the moon, and only about 1.5 seconds to span the portion of the moon that it does in the photo in which it first appears. I also calculated the time between the photo where the proposed contrail first appears and the photo immediately prior to that to be ~4.5 seconds. Seems plausible (albeit, and granted, unlikely) that a plane could have left that contrail between photos at just the right place to appear right where it did. And at the distances involved (~2 miles from your vantage point to the rocket and 144 miles to the proposed contrail), the paralax would be very minimal, so any movement of the camera would not result in a noticeable apparent movement of the trail in relation to the rocket. I know this is quite a few things happening to coincide, but that just makes it unlikely; not impossible. As for not being able to see the proposed contrail except for directly in front of the moon: there are clouds at 3:45 and at 3:46-3:48 that behave in exactly the same way.
Do you have any high resolution video of the event? I see at 4:53 in your YouTube video that there is video of just after the event begins. Were you recording before that at all?
(Also, little correction: I saw you mention elsewhere that you were shooting with a 300, then a 400mm lens, but what is on your 70D appears to be a 200-400mm f/4.0 with the built-in 1.4x tele-converter. Trevor appears to be shooting with a 300mm f/2.8 with an added 2x teleconverter.)
Edit: Using the flight tracker map you linked here (assuming the times are, in fact, correct), there looks to be a plane in about just the right spot at about just the right time, allowing for some slight margins of error. Flight DAL8948 is just above Yum Yum, Tennessee (lol), which is right in the path of your view of the rocket from the church parking lot. The plane, at 6:31 AM, is at 37,000 ft., traveling at ~530 MPH, and about 163 miles away from your location. There are several other flights around that area (Memphis appears to be quite an active airport), but they are all well below that flight level.
2nd Edit: Looks like that time was incorrect after all. The times listed at the bottom appear to be in UTC, so correcting for that... There are quite a few flights that could fit the bill, but SWA1658 seems to be the best match, maybe even a better match than DAL8948. At 6:30 AM Central time, SWA1658 was about 10 km South-Southwest of Covington, Tennessee, putting it directly in the viewing path behind the rocket from your vantage point in the church parking lot, at an altitude of 40,000 ft. and was ~175 miles from your location putting it at just the right height.
And for the record, the reason I am looking for flights as they happen and not for flights that happened earlier and left lingering contrails is because the line suddenly shows up in one photo, but the previous photo had the moon just barely in position to be behind the proposed contrail, but there is no line.
/u/MrPennywhistle! So I did the math, and figured that at the distances your were shooting at, and with the equipment you were shooting with, under ideal conditions, you could actually resolve a Boeing 737 flying over Memphis, Tennessee (200 miles away!) from where you took your photos! It'd only be about 16 pixels long in the full resolution image, but it'd be there! But given the conditions you were shooting in, there's no way you would be able to resolve a plane itself, what with the dim light necessitating relatively slow shutter speeds (planes are fast, yo!), especially given that your photos are slightly out of focus (not a criticism, just an observation!), but a contrail should be easily visible at those distances. What I would really like to see, as an experiment, would be to recreate your shooting conditions (location and equipment), but during mid-day and hopefully on a clear day. In direct sunlight, and with dead-on focus, you should easily be able to use a shutter speed fast enough to freeze a plane to be able to resolve it. Then just spend a while taking photos of the same scene. Memphis is a pretty hoppin' airport, so you shouldn't need to spend too long doing so. Perhaps then utilize your Patreon supporters to look through the photos you've taken to see if they can spot any planes in them. If so, I think that would be pretty good evidence that the line in your photos here is, indeed, a very distant contrail! This is assuming, however, that a plane 200 miles away wouldn't just look blue from Rayleigh scattering and blend in with the sky behind it.
Also, for shiggles, I Photoshopped what I think a plane actually would look like given the shooting conditions of one of your photos (ignoring atmospheric refraction/blurring). This includes motion blur for a 1/40" exposure, and emulating ouf-of-focus blur. Try to find it!
Is it possible for Destin to share the pictures somewhere? I would like to pixel peep to see if I can figure something out. High(est) resolution requested.