Moon madness

I think I've been afflicted by the full moon but luckily, I haven't turned into any kind of werewolf. Since last Saturday, I've been out of doors to admire the waxing moon. Actually, it's all because of Mars because I wanted to see the planet in close proximity again with the moon.

This was what I saw at about 7pm on Saturday (19 Jan). The moon had already risen but it was still daylight:


Here is the moon, taken at about 10pm later in the evening. It's still waxing so part of the familiar surface is still in shadows. Note: all these close-up shots were taken with my Dimage Z5 with its digital zoom enabled.


On Sunday night (20 Jan), I took this wide-angled shot. The camera was on a tripod and I believe the shutter speed was set to 2.5 seconds. This must have accounted for the slight softness in the image because of the earth's rotation:


This next photo was taken at about 6.50pm on Monday (21 Jan) through my car's tinted windscreen as I stopped at the traffic lights. So there's a very slight yellow tinge in the picture, almost inperceptible but it's there, all right. The moon's almost round but still not quite:


And this next picture was snapped last night (22 Jan) at about 11.30pm. Full moon night. The moon was so bright that I dispensed with my tripod and handheld the camera. For stability, I propped myself against the wall. Shutter speed was about 1/250th of a second, aperture wide open, to capture the Moon Bunny:


Finally, seeing that the whole sky was so brightly lit up - the sky was a very deep blue black and there were clouds everywhere - I decided on taking this last photo with the camera set to wide angle and shutter speed set to about a second. The result was pretty dramatic:


Yup, it was really moon madness that hit me. By the way, if you will click on the pictures, you'll get to see them much bigger and clearer.

UPDATE: I woke up at 6.30am this morning to find the moonlight fltering into my room. It was still quite dark outside and the features on the setting moon were now upside down. This familiar sight was probably what our forefathers in China saw and they thought it was the Moon Lady.


By 7.25am, the sky was brightening up. Not quite totally daylight yet. Here's the moon over my neighbour's house. Handheld camera at a one-second shutter speed. The satellite dish aiming at the moon?