Day 9

On my way home this evening I noticed the moon was looking rather full.  I looked up the moon cycle and saw I missed the full moon by about a day.  Since I thought shooting the moon would be fun I decided to do it now, close to the full moon.  I waited until after midnight for two reasons- primarily because I wanted to shoot the photos on the 9th and also because the moon would be higher in the sky.  It took my awhile to get some good ones plus finally figuring out to use the 10 second time delay to eliminate my pressure on the button when using the tripod.

Interesting lesson about the moon: the moon is always 50% illuminated by the sun (except in lunar eclipses), however, we only see one hemisphere (half) of the moon.  We see the moon in phases based on where the moon is relative to the Earth in its ~28 day orbit; whatever part of the moon is white is the area both the sun and the observer can see (think of a mirror viewed at angles).  The moon's period about its own axis (a 'moon day') is exactly equal to that orbit period.  Therefore, the hemisphere of the moon that we see is always the same.  Very few people have ever seen the far side of the moon - those lucky few astronauts of the Apollo missions.

I wanted to capture a picture of the moon with the craters visible as I saw them in the night sky.  Even using our zoom lens I couldn't get as 'close' as I wanted.  Here is the best picture of my set.

This one is for fun; it happened when I thought I could hold still for a longer shutter speed (I used the tripod after).