A foggy Brackettville morning.

Click images to enlarge.




I was up all night and probably would have gone to bed around dawn but I saw that it was foggy. I wanted to try and take advantage of the dawn light through the fog. 200 photos later I had nothing to show for it. Yet I couldn't bear not to keep SOMETHING from the morning so I saved the sunrise shot above and the shots of this curious doe in the Brackettville cemetery below. She couldn't quite decide what I was.

2008 Lunar Perigee over Brackettville

Images enlarge with a click. And some are even worth the trouble.




Thanks yet again to Blackholes and Astrostuff because while I'd have probably popped out tonight to peek at the full moon and have been delighted by my moon shadow, I'd not have known what a special moon it was without Bob's blog. Well, Bob first, and then several emails from friends who know I'm interested in things like the moon coming as close to the Earth as it will be for another 8 years. Read all about it at EarthSky.Org.

In brief:
Extra close moons happen when the full moon coincides with the moon’s closest point to Earth for the month, an event called ‘perigee’ by astronomers.



But when a full moon coincides with perigee, the sun, Earth and moon make a line in space. The moon’s orbit stretches closer to Earth. So the coincidence of perigee and full moon brings the moon closer to Earth than at any other phase. By the way, the sun’s varying distance also influences the moon’s distance. Because we’re closest to the sun around New Year’s Day, the closest full moon perigees always occur at the beginning or the end of the year.

Joining me for the moonrise at St. Mary Magdalene's cemetery tonight was the doe in the photo and montage below. Notice how all the photos of her are saturated with yellow/gold. I didn't have time to adjust my camera for her. She was bathed in the light from the setting sun. I'm not sure I could have corrected much for that fabulous horizontal light. Actually, there were quite a few deer about. They huffed at me until well after dark. Some cows were trying to get home too and it took them awhile to gather up the courage to race by me which is funny considering how far from me they were.

I did turn the camera around briefly to shoot what was going on behind me and tried to catch Jupiter and Venus--you can just barely see Venus.



And, here it is, the full moon rising at perigee--well, a couple of hours after its absolute closest point to earth--but still! Don DiLego's "Ghost" seemed appropriate for shots taken at a cemetery. I know some of them are quite blurry, sorry, the light is changing so rapidly at that time of day that it's hard to adjust the exposure quickly enough to keep up with the shifting light. The sunlight is dimming fast and the moonlight is increasing even faster. Tricky shooting for a camera dummy like myself.

But wait, there's more! Bob mentioned sun dogs and moon halos in His Last Blog Entry and I realized, hey, I could probably get that with my camera. Perhaps not well but that's not the point. Wouldn't you know that right after I finished this blog entry and finally finished putting my perigee pix all over the net (yes, my elbows ache like crazy and the outsides of my hands are going numb) that I popped back outside to see the moon one last time and, WOW, there was the most enormous halo around the moon. Woot! It took up such a huge portion of the sky that my camera couldn't even get it into frame. You wouldn't know it by these photos, but I swear it was pretty.

The photo below was shot with a higher exposure--I put it here to try and show you the rainbow colors of the halo.

A cloudy horizon for Brackettville

I went out to shoot the full moon (I think it will technically be full around midnight tonight) but there were clouds on the horizon and the shot below was the best I got. I ended up doing a 180 and shooting the sunset instead.

Almost Full Moon at the Brackettville Cemetery

The skies have been relatively clear at moonrise for the last couple of nights so I've been going to the cemetery, all of three blocks away, because it has the clearest view of the east in town. I've been late for the moonrise each night which has been just as well because of clouds on the horizon each night. I'm hoping for a very clear horizon at moonrise sometime this week as I'm determined to get a really great moonrise shot--Bob Johnson has me inspired (and seething with jealousy).

I can't hope to come close to what he captures, but that's okay. I just want to see what I can do.

Keep in mind that I don't have a telephoto lens--just the 12x zoom that comes with my camera.

Above: I couldn't resist trying to shoot the moon through one of the letters in the Masonic Cemetery's iron gate. It's not amazing or anything, but it was fun trying to do it. I only got the one clear shot, I couldn't get the camera to focus on the moon through a letter again after this.

I think that might be an owl flying by in the above photo. The owls seem to like hanging out at the cemetery.

Dawn of the Dead

I'm really proud of the above photo because I've tried to shoot this little tree inside its little metal fence before and just couldn't get it right until this morning. I only wish I'd cut down some of the grasses that interfered with the bottom of the shot. Believe you me, I'll go back with a pair of scissors at some other sunrise and shoot it again.

I wasn't feeling well at all yesterday and pretty much slept the day away so when I woke up at 1:00 a.m. this morning, I was wide awake. I killed time until dawn so I could go shoot out at the cemetery and this blog entry is a sampling of what I shot. To see more of what I shot, check out
Sunrise at St. Mary Magdalene's for the rest. And now... I need a nap. By the way, something I did while I was waiting for the sunrise was watch Mojados: Through The Night on Free Speech TV and it was REALLY good. I highly recommend it. Especially for anyone who owns property near the Mexico border. I'm a proponent for putting people to work who are willing to work. I don't understand why we aren't allowing people to just come on in, taking their information, and handing them a guest visa so they can earn some cash legally. Then the only ones sneaking in would be the criminals and drug runners and who cares if they suffer trying to cross over? But these guys who just want to work? Why make it so hard for them? They're just people.

I love the colors in the above shot. It's what I was hoping I'd get.

And I did get it... with a little enhancement from Photoshop.

A girl's just gotta shoot

I'm behind on everything this week (and last week, and most of the week before that) but when I saw how overcast, cool, and beautiful it was outside today, I grabbed my camera and walked to the cemetery.... a mere three blocks from the house. I didn't shoot much worth sharing, but it was fun anyway. The Rest Are Here. Maybe now I've snapped some stuff and gotten my fix I can catch up with other things!