Moon Perigee

The full moon of Saturday night got an awful lot of attention in the media. It was nicknamed a super moon. The moon has an elliptical orbit around the earth, so the distances between them does vary constantly. At this particular time, this was the closest that the moon has been to us since 1993.

The effects of this astronomical event may have passed most people by unnoticed. The moon did in fact appear to be slightly larger in the sky, and slightly brighter. Tides might have varied up to an inch from their norm. Some people may have noticed some of these effects, many probably did not. Personally, the full moon last night did appear rather bright to me. That's what caught my eye at least.

And now for my story. I probably would not have posted anything at all about this moon occurrence, but was rather amused at what happened to me. I've already taken some full moon pictures in the past, but wanted to go and take a super moon shot in case it offered a chance for a high detail shot that I wouldn't get otherwise.

First, I knew my camera settings had to be changed. I had tinkered around with taking some mineral pictures back in February (I haven't posted them yet). I had a great deal of difficulty taking these up close shots of tiny pieces, so tried to change the camera settings. The pictures still lacked good focus and quality. Typically, I never change any settings at all, but knew I'd have to try if I wanted pictures of these small pieces to be even worth looking at. I haphazardly made several setting changes. Some of them were clear to me and with others I had no idea what I was doing. A date stamp starting appearing on all of my pictures. This was not something that I had intended to do. Before I went outside, I wanted to change the setting and remove the date stamp.

Would this have been simple using the manual? Probably. Rather than do that I wanted to rush out, not knowing if cloud cover would occur if I waited too long. So I click, and click. Totally lost, no idea how to change the date stamp. The battery indicator is now saying 'low' too. I finally hit a button that says restore to factory settings. Was this the brightest thing to do? Probably not. Right now the brightest thing around was the moon.

With the date stamp issue now resolved I head out to take pictures. I aim skyward and the camera rebels, refusing to take pictures with dead batteries. I go back into the house and swap out for fresh batteries and then head back outside. The camera just didn't seem the same with all its settings reset, but I took the picture you see above. The moon visually seemed very bright to me, but this new picture seems darker, and quite frankly seemed to show less detail and with less brightness than the previous shots.

I was so intent on taking the shot that next thing I know, I've lost my balance and tumble onto the driveway. My right knee and a finger take the brunt of the force. The finger goes numb. I finally get back into the house, and hit the camera's review button, only to see a message flash that the memory card can not be read. I open up the camera, to remove and reinsert the card, but with my injured finger being uncooperative, the card and batteries all wind up up on the floor. I painfully get down on the floor to gather the items and put them back where they belong. Everything finally works, bringing to you the picture that you see here. Hope it was worth all the effort.

If time and weather permit, I may try again tonight to see if I can get some shots that are comparable to my others. If not I hope you at least enjoy this one!