libration

I’ve photographed the moon several times now with my 300 mm lens and gotten some fairly fabulous results considering the fact that I do not have “top shelf” equipment. So when we had a blue moon last night, I figured I’d shoot it for grins and giggles. I was pretty excited when I noticed that craters Tyco and Copernicus were in very different locations from the image I took in September when most of California was on fire. With two of my own images I was able to visually confirm lunar libration. I’m sure this is no big thing to other people, but the realization of what I unwittingly did got me pretty excited. Unfortunately I wasn’t in as good of a position to photograph the moon lower on the horizon, so last night’s image isn’t as good as the one from September; plus the giddeous phase gave me some gorgeous shadows to work with then as well.

Sept 09

Dec 09