Fotoeins Fotografie

Sydney’s April full-moon: fall and rise in a single day

By HL fotoeins on 20 May 2013

Previously I wrote about how I tracked the path of the setting sun over four consecutive days, until I captured the setting sun at the crown of the Harbour Bridge’s arch in Sydney.

I understood that the full moon would occur on the morning of 26 April 2013, which would provide a good opportunity to observe the moon-set close in time with the sunrise in the morning, and the moon-rise close in time after the sunset later that day. At the full-moon phase, sunrise-moonset and sunset-moonrise observations can be made at about the same time in the morning and evening, respectively; for more, see notes about moon phases here.

I obtained the following sun and moon data from timeanddate.com. All times are in Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC+10); azimuths are measured with 0° North, 90° East, 180° South, and 270° West.

Sun/Moon	Rise time	Set time	Rise azimuth	Set azimuth	Other
SUN	0626h	1720h	74°	286°	day-length 10hr54min
MOON	—	0632h	—	253°	full-moon 0558h
	1735h	—	109°	—

In the quiet morning hour, I watched the full-moon set before the sun bathed the Central Business District in golden light. The full-moon was also in partial eclipse, as there’s a visible “shadow” over the lower-right portion of the full-moon (2nd image in the sequence above). Ten hours later that afternoon, I returned to watch the sunset behind the Sydney Harbour Bridge, followed by the full-moon rising over the Tasman Sea.

With a bit of luck, a bit of dedication, and a good warm fleece to hold off the morning and early-evening chill, I enjoyed making this sequence of photos on the same calendar-day.

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With a Canon EOS450D (XSi) camera, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II lens, and Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens, I made all of the photos above on 26 April 2013 without tripod or filters. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com.