A Man and the Moon

7/8/2003

It's summertime in Michigan and I've been out and about, making trips to the airport, to the lake, and then up to northern Michigan and back over the 4th of July weekend.

As you may or may not imagine, cameras were in hand much of the time, at the airshow, the light-house, the fireworks and you get the picture.

My brother couldn't quite figure out however, just what was posessing me to keep taking pictures of the moon. Earlier in the week I noticed the crescent moon in the late evening sky and I thought to myself that I might just grab one of those to use as the background for my web page.

With the clear night air, I had hoped to get at least one or more images that I might use. Thursday night when we arrived around 11 the moon was low on the horizon and I figured that I'd get a good shot.

I have been pretty happy with the full moon that has been the background for my web page for some time now and I figured it was time for a change.

The image has not been resized and the reason it appears a bit larger than the one of the full moon is that it was low on the horizon and therefore it appeared larger and started to pick up a faint glow.

While waiting for the fireworks to start over Grand Traverse Bay my telephoto found it way skyward again and I fired off another round of images.

Long after we got home I was wandering around just before 1 am and I happened to see the moon just about to set in the west. I grabbed the camera and the next image was taken just before the moon dipped below the horizon. The color is natural - the setting moon will take on a glow when the conditions are right.

Once again Saturday night found me out on the deck in the clear air.

Suddenly, it dawned on me that while I was trying to see the moon with my dinky camera, there was a full blown telescope sitting on a tripod in the living room.

"Hey Dad" I yelled, and with some degree of reluctance, he agreed to bring it on outside. The last time we did this the night was freezing and the most anyone wanted to look at the moon was for about 30 seconds. There would be no excuses for the cold and wind this night. My father got everything powered up and moving and he sighted it on the primary player in the sky.

Once the telescope was in place I started thinking. I told my dad, "You know, the camera lens and the telescope lens look about the same size. I wonder if we could try and get the two tripods set up so that my camera can look into your telescope."

The long and short is.. yes it did, and once I set the camera to the macro close-up mode, an image appeared in my viewfinder.

I'm pleased.

Really pleased.

Let me know if you find any cheese. It's supposed to be right next to the flag.