At night

The moon was full tonight and we were eating on an outdoor deck downtown. To prevent pigeons from joining us, the restaurant has anti-pigeon spikes at the top of the wall. Close and out-of-focus, they look pretty interesting.

This was last night, when the sky was clear. The Moon was just outside the picture, on the right, and Jupiter and Saturn were also visible beyond the Moon. And Mars presiding. A good sky for the last one of September.

This is what the Moon looked like outside my backdoor a few minutes ago. That was about eight hours after the actual full of the Moon, but close enough that, I am told, it is 99.9% illuminated. I bet, like me, you can't tell the difference between this and a fully full Moon. Some people call this a 'blue moon." Others like to suggest that's a "wrong" meaning. Yeah yeah. Ask a thousand people and 999 of them, 99.9%, will likely tell you it is a blue moon. That's how words get their meaning -- the way most people use them.

This was the summer of 2004, negatives from which I am scanning now. I think this was the night before the annual St John's Regatta, an evening which is much more pleasant to my sensibilities than the following day. Agfa Ultra 100 film in my Canonet.

It was very low in the sky, and not far off setting when I saw the moon through the trees in the neighbourhood. My camera refuses to do autofocus under those conditions, so it's a tricky matter of trying to get the manual focus right. The focus is not exactly correct, but it isn't bad. It is 26% illuminated, I understand.

I was about to start making supper when a friend sent a message that she thought I should take a picture of the moon -- it was spectacular with the ring around it. I was up for the challenge. I wanted to have some detail in the moon itself while still showing the branches of the trees in my backyard. It was already too dark to do that with a single shot. So I took two and combined them. Combined them quickly and roughly. I don't have good HDR or layering software, so I just did it in Paint Shop Pro as layers. I sent her the result and she liked it. Then I started supper.

And once again, a view of the moon through the trees over our backyard. Moon pictures: seen one, you've seen 'em all.

The moon is just a couple of days away from being full. The sky is mostly cloudy but the wind is high, so the clouds are moving through. I was preparing supper when I looked out the window and saw the moon peeking through the scuddy clouds. And I grabbed a picture. Noisy but pleasant. :)

It was just getting duckish and the moon had been up, I suppose, an hour to be that high in the sky. And it was only softly visible through the light cloud. This was 28 November and it was fifteen degrees, weather we could have in July and no one would think it odd.

It's a pretty sight at night, and not at all intrusive, but our neighbour is to my mind a little quick off the mark with her Christmas decorations. That mark in this case was the beginning of November. With Hallowe'en gone and past, her Christmas decorations were unboxed and set up. This Frosty has already been blown down a half-dozen times, and re-stood by the following day. Of course she may have a "winter" theme in mind rather than a Christmas one, but even that seems to me to be jumping the gun.

I was busy and didn't check to see it rising over the hill to the east of us, so I was surprised to see it so far in the sky when I did look. This is how the moon looked a few minutes ago from our back yard. [This is actually a layering of two renderings of the original raw file, one rendering by me in PSP, and the other by Picasa -- each had its merits, so I mixed the two.]

When I was a kid, we always called these galleries. Nowadays, most people call them decks in these parts. Along the way, I've heard porch, stoop, step, and perhaps half a dozen other names. I like the idea of it being a gallery since I spend so much time on ours, just watching what's going on. This was a moment this evening when I stept outside while supper was cooking.

We got our first snow in weeks today. It's still blowing around, halfway through the evening. This was the view a few minutes ago from the front door. Well, the more-monochrome-than-it-really-was view.

We had a minor storm today, extending overnight tonight. By breakfast we should have had about 30 cm fall. Halfway through it, this was the view from the front door.

The fullness of Ms Luna is only about 18 hours away, so she is pretty close to full. But there is a constant stream of foggy clouds moving overhead and I was lucky to catch this glimpse of her a few minutes ago.

The website I consult on the Moon's activities tells me that when I took this picture, six hours after the proper fullness, the Moon was still 100% illuminated. I had to wait outside the back door for about ten minutes until a break in the clouds made it visible. The snow is now melting off my slippers which are atop a radiator for that purpose.

My favourite weather is probably a still, warm fog. It's like the signature weather for this city. Today and tonight the temperature rose from 5 or 6 degrees below freezing to ten degrees above ( = 50 Fahrenheit). With slight southerly winds, what can you expect but a bit of fog? And that's what we have.

Not too far to the right of the moon tonight is Mars. Mars is the orb of the hour since a few hours ago the USA space agency put something down on its surface. I did get a picture of the two of them when the clouds broke for a few minutes. But I like this picture better.