Just a wafer thin one

[We’re back out at the beach again.] After the day of rain, we got a little better weather and a nice sunset, still with some high clouds to catch the colors, which in hindsight explains why I didn’t find something sooner – I’d been chiding myself for not paying attention, because I was aware of the moon phases for the trip and the new (dark) moon had fallen just two days read more

A complete washout

I said in the previous post that we’d done two outings in the past week, and this is evidence of the second – there will probably be a little more about it along later. Right now, we’re going to examine how I fared with a particular goal for this one, which was monochrome given the light conditions and the lack of foliage and so on, I decided it was a good time read more

Too cool, part 45: Lunation libration animation

I’ve mentioned, many times, the curious wobble of the moon known as libration, and of course the different features and details you can see when photographing anything other than a completely full moon. Now, courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day comes a wicked animation of it, with lots of additional details.


The video was created by NASA’s read more

On this date 52

And here we are – the 52nd week of the series, and thus the last ‘On This Date’ post of the year! Except, no, we’re better than a week away from the end of the year, aren’t we? That’s what I get for starting this on the 1st. And seriously, what kind of creator makes a solar or sidereal year with such an odd number of hours in it? Sheesh

Anyway, we’ve read more

Gave it a try

Yes, I did indeed get out to view the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn yesterday evening – for what it was worth. I can tell you right now, there are better efforts out there, with better, more dedicated equipment (and probably no small amount of digital “enhancement,” or “compositing,” or as most people call it, “photoshopping.”) I knew how challenging read more

Some more experiments

During an outing yesterday, Buggato asked if I was going to chase any moon shots in the next few nights, and I shrugged and said, “Maybe.” I had some experiments to try, but the past several nights the humidity and haze were affecting things too much.

Going out after 11 PM, however, I saw the moon was showing as deep contrast as I’ve ever seen, evidence of a good clear night, so read more

Because Tuesday follows Monday

Back indeed, with the animated gif (pronounced, “GAL-eh-fray”) that I wanted to include, because it shows better this way. I tweaked the colors to come close to matching, and while it might seem that I didn’t line them up well enough, I think we’re actually seeing the libration between the two shooting sessions, the wobble that the moon performs as it orbits the Earth and read more

The bookends of 2019

In past years I’ve done various exercises like (what I considered) my best photos of the month, or a featured unused image, and jazz like that, so this year I decided to do something a little different for the year-end stuff (or should it be the year-beginning stuff? This is far too confusing for me.) To that end, or beginning, we shall be featuring the first and last images taken within this read more

Only those who risk going too far…

… can know how far they can truly go. That’s the way the saying goes, anyway – I’ve always felt that encouraging people to exceed their limits wasn’t the wisest of proverbs, but at least it gives them something to put on a tombstone.

However, I am vaguely motivated to put up even more photos, to see if I’ll set a new record this year, because the only person I’ll read more

Storytime 8


First off, I’m going to refer you to this post just for trivia’s sake, because the image above was shot the same night. While I wrote that I wasn’t shooting the full moon, that wasn’t actually true – I was just illustrating shooting by the full moon for that post.

But before that happened, I fired off a few shots at home, aiming up alongside the holiday lights still read more

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