Bookends

Like a pair of bookends which define a row of books, I thought that I'd show you a pair of moons, which define the end of one year and the beginning of the next. 

Actually, that isn't really accurate. I should be showing you the moon on Jan. 1st and Dec. 31st of the same year to properly fit the simile. 

But these are the pictures I have and they'll have to do.  Maybe I should describe the moons as the parenthesis around the moment when one year became the next. 

I couldn't seem to get a photo of trees and sky to stay in focus when I took this picture. I took several, and this was the best one, believe it or not. There was a brisk breeze and that was keeping the trees in constant motion. Maybe that was the problem. It is the night of December 30, 2017. I don't like to use out-of-focus pictures, but I wanted to have something to show you where the moon was in the sky on this date. It's a good thing I took these pictures on the 30th, because, as you know from my post about the 31st, there was no hope of seeing anything in the sky but clouds that night. 

The day had been hot, but it was cooling off nicely, and I had decided I'd sit on the deck for a while and enjoy that breeze before trying to get to sleep. 

This next photo came out much better than I expected. Nice and sharp. I was resting my little Canon SX710 on a broom handle for stability and snapping away like mad, hoping to get at least one shot that was not only centered, but in focus too. And I did. (What a great thing a digital camera is. I'd have spent a fortune on film for this shoot in the old days.)

I'm very pleased with this shot. I can't believe I can see craters. No clouds at all in the sky. 

.........Happy New Year.......Happy New Year.......Happy New Year........Happy New Year........

These pictures are from the night of January 1, 2018. As you can see, it's still pretty cloudy up there. I hoped though to get a chance for a few shots.

For some reason, this is more in focus than the first picture.

There's the moon, and the clouds do give the picture some interest, but ...

The clouds are moving fairly quickly tonight. Maybe I'll get a chance...

This was the best I could do. There was only a moment or two of relatively few clouds that allowed me to get this, but you can see that it doesn't have the clarity of my moon on the 30th. I'll keep trying. Maybe tonight will be clear and I'll be able to show you something better. 

This one was taken on the night of Jan. 2nd. Again, lots of clouds moving by and it was lower in the sky than the one I took on Dec. 30.  More atmosphere to shoot through and more moisture in the air means that it's not as sharp as last year's moon. Still, it's not half bad. 

BTW, you might want to compare my pictures with some of the photos taken of the first 'supermoon' of 2018. You'll notice that mine are upside down compared to those photos taken in the northern hemisphere. 

At one point, the clouds parted a little and this star was visible. I wondered what would happen if a snapped a picture of it at a high zoom. This was the result of my pointing and clicking before it disappeared again. This is at about 100 power. Interesting.   -djf