Moonrise

There was a beautiful full moon last night for bonfires and werewolves alike. I tried to take some pictures of it, but it came out too small. Then I found that I could fit my digital camera's nose into the eyepiece of my binoculars. Unfortunately, I was unable to hold the conjoined unit steady enough to get a clear exposure for a picture.

This was the best I could take. There's a faint reddish tint to it since it was so low on the horizon.

I noticed that when I was done fiddling with the binoculars that the moon was a little higher than it was when I first noticed it. So I had the idea to set up my webcam and laptop to take a timelapse video of the moon rising into the night sky.

revver(93287)

Notice that it does not move in a straight line. The path it takes across the sky is ecliptic.

No doubt you will want to watch this video a few times and drag the slider left and right quickly (it's fun, try it!), and Revver's flash interface isn't very helpful for that. So you can download the video here: 93287.mov (436 KB).