Sept. Equinox 2010 - Full Moon, Sunrise, Sunset

Witness crossroads of the mind, ground, sky, and time. You and I are here now, in our minds. On the ground, a wooden ramp intersects with beach and sea. In the sky, Moon, Sun and planets seem to have crisscrossing orbits overhead. In time, the September equinox happens at the exact moment when the equators of Earth and Sun cross.

In 2010 the equinox was on September 23 at 3:09 universal time. Here, the equinox was on September 22 at 22:09 or 10:09 p.m. CDT.

In the west, the panorama shows sunset the evening before the equinox and the tiny full Moon sets the morning after the equinox.

In the east, the panorama shows sunrise the morning after the equinox and the tiny full Moon rises the evening before the equinox. Using QuickTime, the controller bar shows the locations.

Aligning and pulling our attention opposite the Sun, a full Moon on the equinox happens every 19 years. Also rare on this equinox, Jupiter was exactly opposite the Sun on Sept. 19, adding to the Moon's affect. Jupiter was too close to the Moon to see through Earth's atmosphere in sunrise/sunset photos, but know that it was there.

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USA-Canada / USA-Florida

Lat: 30° 17' 59.88" N
Long: 87° 5' 40.9" W

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Medium. Nearby, but not to the last decimal.

Canon 300D (Digital Rebel) digital SLR, EF-S 10-22mm lens, ISO 100, 1/60 s, evening at f13, morning at f5/6. Nodal Ninja pano head. 12 photos each at 17mm focal length (stitched as 28mm lens). Composited elements of two panoramas as one in Adobe Photoshop CS4. Stitched panos in QuicktTime Virtual Reality Authoring Studio (QTVRAS). Added annotations and saved as .mov in QuickTime 7 Pro.

This panorama is the third in a series of four capturing sunrise and sunset at the same location but at the cardinal points of the year: spring, summer, fall, and winter; that is, March equinox, June solstice, September equinox, and December solstice.

Each shooting I learn more about what I should have done. For example, in March I learned that I should mark the tripod legs and center position on the ramp, so that morning and evening panos match up. In June I learned that I should have made the marks permanent, so that June panos matched March ones. This September I found that the marks did not last three months. Also, in the morning I could not get the tripod legs to the same exact places they were in the evening.

The camera was lower, so less of the landscape is visible that the first two shootings.

I wanted to include Jupiter which was near the full moon, almost directly opposite the sun, but the haze or glare close to the horizon obscured it at sunrise and sunset.