St. Patrick's Day Moon

I certainly seem to have a fascination with the moon these days. It is becoming fuller each day and was out quite early tonight, or should I say late this afternoon. On a lark I took this as I got home and it came out much better than I expected. I was surprised at all the detail that I managed considering that I had to crop this shot as it was done at 300mm hand held. Just goes to show you what a D300 with a nice VR lens can do.

D300, 70-300mm VR, 300mm, f/8.0, 1/250s, ISO 200

Moon over Wanaque

The half moon decided to make an appearance this afternoon and led to this photo:D300, 300mm f/4.0, f/7.1, ISO 200, 1/400s

Which was follow by these robins who were very comfortable in a budding springtime tree.D300, 300mm f/4.0, f/10.0, ISO 200, 1/400s

Lunar Eclipse

For those of you who haven't been paying attention there was a lunar eclipse tonight. This was the last one until 2010. It started around 8:45pm and went total around 10pm. The moon started to emerge from the shadow around 10:50pm. There are a couple of cool things about a lunar eclipse, you can see it without any special glasses etc and the moon doesn't go completely dark but most times turns some shade of red. This happens because the moon is reflecting sunlight and even though the earth gets between the moon and the sun, some light bends around the earth and through the atmosphere. Depending on the particles in the atmosphere that particular day determines the color of the eclipse.

I woke Kimmy up to watch it and she was very excited. It was the first one she has ever seen.

Without further ado, here are some photos:

Just passing into totality

Saturn in the lower left and Regulus above moon

short exposur - middle of totality

Eclipse almost over

D300, 70-300mm, ISO 400, all at 300mm except #2 at 125mm

Moon over sunset clouds

On my way home tonight I had to pull over in Bridgewater and grab a few shots of the moon over the sunset colored clouds.

D300, 70-300mm, 98mm, f/6.3, ISO 200, 1/160s

New Moon

As they say - when at first you don't succeed, try, try again. I was pretty annoyed at myself last night for blowing the photos of the moon that I was trying to take. I knew tonight I would try again but I had a secret weapon this time. I used the internet and posted a question to a photography forum that I belong to: Digital Grin.

Needless to say many people came to my rescue and the main issue turned out to be that I was over-exposing the moon.

I was determined tonight to get a good shot of the moon

Good news - I had no issues what-so-ever
Bad news - I need longer glass - I had to crop the photo quite a bit to get a nice large image.

D300, 70-300mm VR, 300mm, f/6.3, 1/640 s, iso 100

Moon over Wanaque

I tried to get some pictures of Kimmy playing moonball the other night. It's just like basketball but with the moon instead. Needless to say I had problems with my first try since it looked more like she was playing moon marble.

This was after the sunset pictures and due to the fact that we had a full moon and Kimmy was still willing to take a few pictures (at least I had found my gloves by this time). Having done a lousy job a few nights ago I wanted to get out there again and get some new shots of the moon which I could try to combine with the pictures of Kimmy to make a great moonball picture.

I was very unhappy with all of my pictures mostly because I don't have a lot of experience taking moonshots and it sure wasn't easy without a tripod. Imagine my surprise when I came in and found that I had one cool picture with a star studded moon (it makes sense when you look at the picture and some stars . It was actually a longer shutter setting completely by mistake but it was the only one I liked tonight (Click for larger image)

D300, 18-200mm lens, 18mm, F/5.6, 2.5 secs, iso 800