Chasing the Supermoon

Everyone is talking about the supermoon this week.  Apparently, its the largest full moon for a life time.  Assuming I only have one life this was going to be my best time to chase that big moon.

I forgot that this is England in winter.  The chances of seeing the moon behind a thick layer of cloud were nill.  You could not even see a glow where the moon should have been.  So I waited a day – not much better.  Then a couple days later a brief break in the clouds was forecast around 7 o’clock in the morning.  Perfect for a photostop on the way to work.

Checking out the Lightrac app on my iPad I found that moon was going to be due east at this time.  So I headed due west of Glastonbury Tor to the small village of West Pennard.

The clouds parted just as the Metoffice predicted.

Supermoon - West Pennard, Somerset, UK.

Supermoon – West Pennard, Somerset, UK.

I had not planned for the moon to be so high in the sky. However, with a bit of imagination the wisps of cloud flowing from the moon, and the twinkling stars, do have a Christmas feel?

The stars were a brucie bonus that I only saw once I opened the image on the computer in the evening.

Going Close-Up

That morning it was much darker than this picture above makes it look.  To get the picture I had to push the camera to its limits with a 3 second exposure.  At that exposure the moon was never going to reveal the details of its surface. I do not have a have a telephoto so I switched to manual and took another picture at f11 and 1/125th of a second.  Even with my standard lens zoomed in all the way the moon was still tiny.

I had to make this 100x area crop!

Supermoon - West Pennard, Somerset, UK.

Supermoon – West Pennard, Somerset, UK.

Not a great picture, but a great memory of a cold morning when I nearly saw a  supermoon.  It goes to show how good a standard zoom lens can be – thanks Nikon. 

And Finally…

The clouds gather around the moon and I head off to work with a bunch of dark of images.   It would be another 10 hours before I could shift that slider to the right  and see what I had.

Supermoon - West Pennard, Somerset, UK. ID 808_1988

Supermoon – West Pennard, Somerset, UK. ID 808_1988

 

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