Thursday, December 07, 2006
What I Saw At School Today
I took this picture from school this morning. It's unfortunate because what I saw isn't what came out in the picture. The moon looked so large, and the sun's peeking over the horizon made the tree in the center seem to glow. Even cropping it didn't help. Bummer; I'd love to be able to share what I saw.
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6 comments:
What time in the morning was this?
A few minutes before 7:30.
Righteous.
It was righteous in person. The picture is crap. I took 5 of them, and they're all crap.
Spoken like an artiste. Too bad my photography isn't the work of an artiste.
Getting a "big moon" requires the use of a telephoto lens. The bigger the tele, the bigger the moon. The tele "compresses" things in the direction from you toward the moon. A wide angle won't do the scene justice.
Also, the "big moon" actually subtends the same angle in our field of view as the "small moon" it becomes several hours later.
If you see a "big moon" near the horizon at sunset or thereabouts, take a sheet of paper and curl it into a lensless "telescope." Tighten the tube down until the moon fills the entire opening as you peer through it. Now tape it to preserve its size. Several hours later, go back and look at the "small moon" high overhead through your scope. You might expect a nice black frame around the moon now, but lo and behold, the small moon also fills the entire opening of the tubed paper.
The sense that the moon is bigger near the horizon is an optical delusion.
That I know. What disappointed me was how tiny the moon looks in the picture, even after I used full optical zoom (wouldn't go to digital zoom--yucky) on my camera.
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