Shoot the Moon: Biggest of Year

Took some pics of the moon tonight. Extremely cold night with no cloud cover. Telescope my family got me for my birthday plus my digital camera equals a decent shot of the moon. Took me a while to dial in the focus, iso and shutter speed.

Tonight's moon was the biggest of the year according to NASA and others:

It's no illusion. Some full Moons are genuinely larger than others and this Friday's is a whopper. Why? The Moon's orbit is an ellipse with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other: diagram. In the language of astronomy, the two extremes are called "apogee" (far away) and "perigee" (nearby). On Dec. 12th, the Moon becomes full a scant 4 hours after reaching perigee, making it 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser full Moons we've seen earlier in 2008.

Funny thing is, I had no idea that it was the biggest moon of the year when I was taking the photos. I had just been noticing the moon for about a week, thinking "I need to get the telescope out to take some pics." Have to say, I was quite pleased with myself when I saw on some news site that the moon's big tonight.

Look at the detail/contour of the upper right portion of the photo. It's close to a full moon so the light is almost behind me, the photographer. I think that I need to get the 'scope/cam out for a half or quarter moon... I suspect that I'll see more depth in the craters because there will be more contrast between sun/shadow.

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