Sky Wonders Part 2

Michelle dragged me to the moonbow at Victoria Falls tonight, to take a picture of it. I took four 30-second exposures from different angles, and they turned out pretty good! To actually look at the moonbow, it wasn't too colourful, mostly just a white arc. But the camera captured the colour quite well. Here is my favourite. (I'm sure the others might find themselves on Michelle's Facebook account!)

Click on the photo for a bigger version. Note the constellation Orion in the background! I didn't even notice it until I downloaded the picture! The dark rushing water in the foreground is the mighty Zambezi river right before it goes over the edge. The rainbow is made from the mist of the falls refracting the light of the full moon.

In other news we also visited the Falls this morning to get soaked, and saw "sunbows" as usual. Michelle took the kids out to play and eat while I took our friend Rachel (who is visiting us) to the Boiling Pot, then the Zimbabwe border in the middle of the bridge. Then we decided to run eight kilometres in the noon day sun, without water (we bought some at kilometre six), to join our families at Olga's Italian Eatery. It was a good run, but now I am a bit sore. After lunch we drove back halfway to the falls to visit the Crocodile Park, where we saw many lethargic beasts and also a few deadly snakes. Then a quick visit to one of the nicer hotels to see their zebras, impala, and giraffes. Then to our Lodge to get some R&R before the moonbow adventure at 8pm...so a nice long busy happy vacation day!

Sky Wonders

I was driving back from a colleagues house--I think it was Easter Sunday--and chanced to look at the western sky. There was some sort of Cloud Experience happening! (Or maybe one of the Pentecostal churches in town was really rocking it up!) Kate and I had recently been learning about clouds, so I was able to name some of the ones in this picture: cirrus and cumulus anyway, but what about that blue streak!?

Then a day or two later, when the power was off at night, I again chanced to go outside and look up. The milky way was bright, and pretty much the only two constellations I can find, the Southern Cross and Orion, were out. I took some 30-second exposures and the Southern Cross turned out pretty good (though nothing like what my brother-in-law and father-in-law can do).

Isn't Creation marvelous when we stop to look?