Moon Me, Baby

I've mentioned my astronomy hobby before, and that I occasionally will take moon and sun photos. Here are a few I took of the moon just using a basic camera with no fancy preparation or set-up. As you can see from the dates on the photo labels, the first one was taken in January 2006, while the other three were taken in September 2007; the latter were all taken on the same night.

It's hard to get a good moon photo without using a tripod, because the slightest hand shake will result in a blurry moon; these particular shots out of many taken on those two nights came out okay though.

This first one you may need to biggify in order to see the clouds above and beneath the moon (it's hard to tell in post-mode how well the small post photo will come out!):

These next 3 you can see the clouds better, but you still might want to bigify to see the detail a bit more:

I hope you found these somewhat interesting!

Here Comes the Sun

And now for something completely different.

Astronomy is one of my hobbies. And while I haven't gotten into the sub-culture of astrophotography all that much, like some do, I have been known to occasionally take very basic moon and solar photos through my telescopes. So I thought I'd share a few solar photos with you from a couple of years ago, on the theory that most of you have probably never seen the sun in quite this manner before.

Believe me - these photos aren't that good, and I'm not just being modest. Really good astrophotographers take *amazing* photos, with so much surface and other detail. But they're still kinda cool. I recommend clicking on them for the larger version, to see the flares coming off the surface...

WARNING: Special solar filters or solar telescopes are needed to view the sun; please don't use a telescope or binoculars without special equipment or you risk not only burning out the 'scope, but also your eyes...and we wouldn't want that.