The Moon This Evening

A heads up for fri 12th Biggest Full Moon of the Year
12.09.2008

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[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Dec. 9, 2008: No, you can not see Neil Armstrong's footprint. But go ahead and look: The full Moon of Dec. 12th is the biggest and brightest full Moon of the year.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]It's no illusion. Some full Moons are genuinely larger than others and this Friday's is a whopper. Why? The Moon's orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other: diagram. In the language of astronomy, the two extremes are called "apogee" (far away) and "perigee" (nearby). On Dec. 12th, the Moon becomes full a scant 4 hours after reaching perigee, making it 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser full Moons we've seen earlier in 2008.[/FONT]
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A heads up for sat 13th.
GEMINID METEOR SHOWER: The annual Geminid meteor shower peaks on Dec. 13th and Dec. 14th when Earth passes through a stream of debris from extinct comet 3200 Phaethon. Bright moonlight will reduce the number of visible meteors from the usual 120/hr to only 30/hr or so. That's still a nice show. For best results, watch the sky starting 10 pm local time on Saturday night (Dec 13th) until dawn on Sunday morning (Dec. 14th). [live updates]

 

Thanks for the tip off Walnut!

 

I know a full moon is not the best to show details of the surface, but this is my best picture tonight so far. Need to check it out again nearer midnight when it is higher

 

Well despite an almost full moon Robert you've managed to capture some pretty good detail there. Well done! What aperture/speed/ISO did you use?

 

Dave
Settings were:
f4.9
1/200th Sec
ISO 100
280mm
Spot metering.
It is bright tonight! and the spot metering did a good job. I did do a bit of PS afterwards
robert

 

Might be worth trying stopping down a bit it might help get a slightly sharper focus, you should be able to up the ISO without getting significant 'grain'. I've found that I can slow the shutter speed a fair bit before I start getting motion blur.
No chance of a photo tonight as it's got quite cloudy and outlook for tomorrow night isn't good:(
Here's last night's effort. Bit of tweaking in PS (very light touch to curves and a slight sharpening)
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Great stuff you guys keep em comming (weather permitting):thumb:

 

I shall certainly try to see if I get a photo of the full moon tonight.
It will not be anything like the photos on here but I can at least say that I tried.

 

Wouldn't you just believe it rained all night no sign of the moon,anyone succeede?

 

I tried ansd tried to get a glimpse of the moon, with no luck.
cloudy sky.

 

100% cloud cover and rain. Doesn't look at all good for tonight either

 

A heads up for tommorow night,The Moon is en route to Venus for a spectacular conjunction on Dec. 31st. On New Year's Eve, the two brightest objects in the night sky will shine through city lights and even fireworks--so everyone can enjoy the show. It's a nice way to end the year cameras at the ready.