Tag Archives: Super Moon

Moonset On Storm Mountain

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The Mummy range is a mountain range located within Rocky Mountain National Park and is visible from the third tier observation and weather monitoring deck here at *The Institute year round. Storm mountain is particularly visible due to its prominence on the horizon. Normally it is surrounded by other snow caps, well in fact it is always surrounded by other snow caps, and keeps its mantle of white till late into the summer. However in the summer things change. The wet storms begin and they arrive with gale force winds and driving rain. Lots of rain. The lightning and the thunderous sounds of its strikes rending and tearing its way through the sky can be heard for miles. The flashes of the lightning strikes themselves can be seen for minutes and sometimes days after the flash having burned their image indelibly onto your retinas. Which is why you want to always wear welding goggles when looking at lightning or welding too. Remember you only get one set of eyeballs. Treat them as if you’d like to see out of them for a long time. Just because lighting is fun doesn’t mean you should stare at it like a dumb person.

It is during these storms that some of our best pictures are taken of the immense power and magnitude of these storms. Capturing these moments is not for the faint-hearted. To get the full effect of the drama that occurs we have set up an open to the elements, semi-permanent photographic station out on the third tier, cantilevered deck, high up on the West Tower. We have fastened our metal tripod and waterproof cameras to the floor with non-conductive fasteners rated for two billion Joules of electricity in the unlikely event that lightning strikes the setup during one of these photographic sessions.

However lately we haven’t had that much luck in the not getting struck by lightning category. In fact the last three interns we’ve had chained to the tripod have come close to sustaining serious injury and third degree burns from hanging on to the metal railing around the deck when lighting struck the metal collars they were wearing. Some of them find this unsettling and begin screaming uncontrollably and leaping about. Luckily the doors are thick enough to cancel most of the noise. We think maybe the two billion Joules fasteners we used might be faulty.  It’s because the interns tend to run away or even jump off the deck when the lightning strikes get too close, thereby missing the better shots, that we’ve had to resort to the light chaining and padlocking the outer doors to make sure we get all the data we need.

During the last Super moon that occurred our fail-safe lightning rod system broke down in the middle of the torrential storm and let a small amount of lightning slip through to one of our interns who had unaccountably wrapped his chain around the legs of the tripod, tripped and was hanging over the metal deck railing when the lightning burned through his chain, allowing him to slip rather ungracefully over the edge. Apparently he fell down onto the tall timber next to the foot of The Institutes massive stone foundation. We say apparently because we can’t see him in any of the treetops so he must have crashed on through to a lower point. We hope to find him when we do our annual spring pruning next month.

Unfortunately he managed to break off the camera mount and the camera during his struggles losing the images we desperately needed for this post. One of our staff illustrators was able to create a facsimile of the image of the Super moon setting over Storm Mountain in the middle of that fantastic storm that you see above, so we were able to complete the post thereby saving the day. There always seems to be a bright side to these things for which we’re thankful of course. Anyway here you have it such as it is, Moonset On Storm Mountain

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

MoonBirds

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There has been a lot of talk lately about these new kind of moons, these Super Moons, that have appeared over our countryside. It’s unclear exactly where these new moons came from. Personally and it is the prevailing thought here at the Institute that we, as a country, were out of the moon making business. We had a perfectly serviceable one that had been performing adequately for years and now suddenly we have a bunch of new moons hanging around and we’re supposed to just accept them without question. Well I have a question. How much did all these new moons cost? Wasn’t this something we should have voted on? Who asked for a new moon anyway? Does this new moon have anything to do with the erosion of our personal liberties, not to mention our privacy.

One of the largest concerns we have and you should have too, is that this new Super Moon that has begun slinking through the night sky, and sometimes the day one too, acting as if it has a perfect right to be here, is already here, apparently we cannot take it back. So, if it is larger does that mean it is closer, and if it is closer does that mean that anyone on it can see us better? Are they using this new moon to monitor our night-time activities? Who exactly is in charge here? If they can just run a brand new moon past us without any warning What’s next ?!?

Where is the public outcry, the demonstrations, the indignation of the people? I haven’t seen one sign holder down on the corner of College and Mulberry shaking their signs in nearly hysterical frustration saying “Honk if you hate the new moon.”  “Super Moon Sucks!”  and “Old Moon First-ers”. People you can not get this complacent. ‘They’, and you know which ones I’m talking about, will not be content with just fleecing us for a new moon, oh no, there’s plenty more in their liberal bag of tricks. They think because everyone is more energy conscious these days that we’re going to roll over and buy this feeble excuse that ” The new moon is greener, the new lighting involved in illuminating this new Super Moon saves Americans huge amounts of money by being more efficient. 50% savings every full moon.”, etc. Well I’m calling BullPucky on that crap, so to speak.

Where are all the EPA studies? This new Super Moon for those of you who don’t read or understand fully what you see on TV, is a larger, like really huge, moon that is much brighter and more arrogant than our old perfectly good moon is, or was I should say. And because of these new aspects of this moon there are some huge environmental problems involved here, and we here at the Institute have been documenting some of them for an exclusive expose we are planning in the near future. We’re telling it like it is, black helicopters be damned, because you the reader deserve to know.

In the image above you can see one of the tragic repercussions of this wanton disregard for Nature. Who are we to think that we can just alter conditions that have been in existence for millenniums, or at least for a long time. The Sandhill cranes pictured above are having to fly a minimum, by our calculation, of 30% further to fly past this new Super Moon than they have had to do for countless years before with our old perfectly good moon. Yes this “New” moon, this Super Moon is so large that these poor exhausted birds must flap their huge wings over and over again to simply get past this new moon. No wonder the Sandhill Crane population is dwindling. They no longer have the energy required for mating, or as it is known in the birding world as “bumping their uglies” and other nighttime activities that they exercised so freely and ribaldry before. Everyone responsible for this whole mess should be made to stand out here in the cold bitter night and hear the pitiful cries of these magnificent birds as they grope their way past this new phenomenon into a lower wattage future. Our arrogance will bear bitter fruit I fear.

Take a stand. NO more new celestial bodies without a full feasibility study and public input. No more changing the environment by unfeeling, inexperienced, progress at any cost, bureaucrats. No more. Like my Dad used to say “Just leave it the hell alone.” a philosophy that has stood the test of time. The next time they float one of these new Super Moons past you, just say no. Don’t look. If enough people don’t look they’ll get tired of it and take it down and then where will they be, out on their fat, pork fed hineys’, that’s where. Stay tuned for further updates, we’ll have more on this dangerous trend in moon shifting in a month or so. Remember, Be Vigilant and if you’re passing by those Sandhill Cranes’ breeding ground some Supermoonlit night, give them some privacy, don’t look.