California must be on fire again…

… because the skies are all “pretty” again. Take last nights sunset:

Normally the sun is far too bright to look at when it goes down over that hill. But last night it was safe to look at not only with the naked eye, but through the zoom lens.

Then the moon came out. This is it around 11PM, when it was well up in the sky:

It was bright orange… much as it normally looks when it’s just rising.

There was on and off cloudiness. Coupled with the moon and the smoky haze, some oddly unsettling effects were visible to the naked eye, but really came out with long exposures:

Standing on a small hill overlooking the local shallow valley while a deeply orange moon peeks in and out of clouds casting ghostly moonbeams hither and yon created a strange mood, to say the least. It didn’t help that I also saw, but did not photograph, something very odd way off in the distance.

Pretty sure it might have somethign to do with this…