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Lisa Ann Fanning
Monmouth County, NJ
03/19/2022
12:00 am

Equipment Details:

📷: iPhone 13 heavily zoomed
🔭: Celestron NexStar Evolution 8 + 32mm eyepiece

Post-processing Details:

Image cropped, enhanced and compiled on a Mac.

Image Details:

Did you know that there is a correlation between Bird Migration and the Full Moon cycle?

In the 17th century, English minister and scientist, Charles Morton described that day’s current thinking that birds migrated to and from the moon.

Some bird species will migrate when conditions (wind direction and speed) are right around the full moon cycle.

Here in New Jersey, April/May is peak timing for northbound migration and September/ October for southbound.

The practice of pointing a telescope at the disk of the moon to see birds migrating at heights not easily observable by naked eye to see birds migrating at night was first described by George Lowery and Robert Newman in the 1940s - 1960s.

In this photo, taken around midnight on 3/19/22 (hours after the full moon,) you can see a bird passing “by” Mare Tranquillitatis as I was exploring the topography of the moon.