Dramatic Moonrise

Two nights ago, we were sitting in the living room, and Marga exclaimed, "Whoa! Check out the moon!" It was just peeking up over the tree-lined hillside to the east of our house. I ran to get my camera and snapped several pictures during the minute I had when the natural satellite was still behind the trees. Only one of them came out very good.

The following night, I decided that, if the weather was willing, I'd be ready to photographically ambush the moon as it rose over the trees. As anyone who has tried it will tell you, lunar photography is not easy. A moon that looks huge to the eye ends up only hitting a few pixels on your CCD. I've tried various hacks, but this was my first attempt with my new 200mm lens.

I should've written down my camera settings from the night before. Instead I just made a guess before the moon came up and it turned out that the brightness of the moon was too much to get any crater detail in my video. Oh well. I'll have to keep at it. After all, it's just now the start of the season when I can leave a window open for an hour at night.

My best shot from two nights ago.

Here's my very short video with overly dramatic music:

It's also available in 1080p HD if you roll that way.