Last glimpse of the Chinese New Year moon

Okay, the last of my sky shots for this month, all taken with my little Fujifilm compact camera. It is quite a pain trying to use it when there are limitations to its so-called manual mode. At times like this, I so wish to own an SLR camera again, one that I can control the f-stop and the shutter speed manually.

The first moment that I walked out into the street at seven o'clock this morning, all I could see was this bright dot of light from Venus. I had to strain my eyes trying to locate the waning moon and finally, I found it skirting just above the rooftop of some houses. So low in the sky. And so dim too.

Actually, this was the first time that I had seen a moon so thin and dim. Tomorrow would be the new moon already. The last light from this disappearing old moon made it barely noticeable. As I didn't have a tripod with me, I had to make do with steadying myself against a ledge just to take its photograph. This seemed like the best shot, after it had been cropped; the rest was affected by a more severe camera shake.

I might as well show the other acceptable picture from the camera. The moon was so low in the sky but Venus was blazing higher above. In fact, it was so bright that at 7.26 a.m., I could still notice it in the morning sky.