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.
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.
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
