Thinking about the Neville Brothers...

those aren't jets, those are aliens

Maybe my "people" are finally coming for me!

Secrets of shooting the moon - set camera on AUTO and engage FLASH. Flash will never reach the moon, but it will fool the camera into giving you a faster exposure time and record the actual light reflected from the moon.
Actually you have pretty good moon shots. To make them better in your computer, increase contrast and saturation to pop the moon's surface features. You'll probably have to take several shots to get one you really like. And if there is moisture in the atmosphere, it will always look fuzzy.

Nice "The Aliens Are Coming" shots, too.

Your first suggestion is how I got the top two shots (add in a tripod). If I'd had a more powerful lens, my moon would be a little more substantial. I'd like it bigger, but I was at least happy with the yellowish color, which is what I was trying to capture.

Nice "The Aliens Are Coming" shots, too.

Thanks!

The jet rails look totally cool!

I also vote for aliens.

Thanks! One day I'm going to get those spaceships silhouetted against the moon.

No, I won't say it... ;)

What you need is the harvest moon that is super super huge along I-81 somewhere. I've made the trek (from Blacksburg to Northern VA) at night when I had the 72 Dodge Polara and while crossing the farm fields this huge moonrise occurs. It's big, larger than ever, and it would do Linus proud as a Great Pumpkin look-a-like.

Otherwise, you need a telescope and some duct tape ;).

Edited at 2009-07-06 11:24 pm (UTC)

That huge harvest moon is an optical illusion; it fools the human eye, but can't fool a camera. If you shoot it, it'll be a little white orb way off in the distance, just like the moon we regularly see. Trust a frustrated photographer on this. For all the theories on why it happens, you can Google "moon illusion."

P.S. Duct tape takes care of everything.

It slices, it dices it binds them all back together again

And here I was thinking it was the atmosphere lensing all along...

I did find that in the middle of the night, when I wake up from sleep and want to see what time it s, but my eyes are crushed from sleeping, I can trick the focus by placing my fingers in the line of view from eye to clock (a lit up digital clock, btw). The blur of disfigured eyes from sleep is "corrected" by focusing on the blur of my fingers so that I can actually see the clock in focus.

According to Astronomy (or one of those spacey periodicals I found in the VT library one mid-sumer night, this is a similar trick played with gravitation lensing to "focus" better on distant objects when a mass is slightly "in the way" bending the light a little. Or, maybe it was just a work-around until the corrective lenses were brought out to Hubble.

Very nice. I almost took some picturs of the moon last night myself.

Thanks!

Great exposures - you can quite understand why people mistake such things for UFO's.

Thanks!

When I was a little kid and people talked about UFOs and aliens, it scared the crap out of me. I NEVER wanted to see one--maybe that's why I didn't?