POTD: Red Planet, Red Moon

Red Planet, Red Moon
Bozeman, Montana
2020

The moon and Mars are in conjunction this week, i.e., they are very close together in the sky. The moon appears to be welcoming Mars by changing it’s color to match that of the Red Planet. The special effects are courtesy of our local forest fire.

This photo was from two nights ago. Last nights moon was significantly less red, a roundabout indicator that the fire in the area, while still 0% contained, has been slowed significantly even though it had gone from 400 acres in size Friday morning to 7,000 later on in the day. Yesterday, we were allowed to drive up to our mountain house temporarily. The nearest burned area to our house was about 2 miles away. We saw many, many intact homes that were completely surrounded by charred landscapes, pointing to a great job by firefighters in regard to structure protection as well as homeowners who have taken seriously the advice to create a “defensible space” around their homes. We did see two homes burned to the ground and heard there are more.

Today the weather has changed significantly from the heat of the last two days. In fact there is a winter weather advisory out for up to 4″ of snow above 6,000 feet. (Our house is at 6200 feet.) We are comfortable that our house is out of danger from this fire. We feel bad for the nearby devastation and even worse for all the folks out in California who are and have been living with much bigger fires for much longer than we have.