The Moon and Venus

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

Tonight the Moon and Venus put on quite a show right after sunset. Venus was very bright and dangling right below the lovely crescent moon. It was extremely windy and cold, but I went outside with my Canon 30D and the Tamron 28-200mm zoom to grab this shot.

Ambrose

New Ride!

I've also been preoccupied with my new vehicle which I picked up off of Craigslist in Washington, DC. It's an electric scooter called the "eGo Cycle II Classic". It's a 24V 35AH scooter with a 2HP motor. It can go about 25mph and has a range of 15-20 miles on flat terrain. What a fun ride! It has some minor issues, the brushes on the motor need to be replaced and the back tire has a bad case of being out-of-round, but those are easy things to replace...

Ordered a Dewalt Jigsaw

After much deliberation and mulling in my head on how to make this cut, I've finally decided to not do it by hand and ordered a Dewalt DW318K orbital jigsaw. This should arrive in the next few days and allow me to make the cut easily!

Thanks,

Ambrose

Full Moon at Perigee 12-12-08 Take II

I had a sneaking suspicion that something was wrong with the first moon image I put up. The moon didn't seem very round! Taking a closer look at it, I can see that my stitching software, Smoky City Design's Panorama Factory had misplaced the merge points and had actually duplicated the upper middle part of the image. You can see the duplicated if you look carefully. You can see two columns of veeeery similar craters! I'm leaving the blog entry up so that everyone can see it. Here is an updated version of that image with a little less sharpening and better merging.

Antonin Rukl's Atlas of the Moon!

I've heard wonderful things about this atlas. It's legendary in it's cataloging of all of the craters and mare on the moon. I just picked up a pristine copy on Astromart and look forward to getting it soon. 

Full Moon at Perigee 12-12-08

Early in the evening, I saw the full moon rising above the horizon and it was gorgeous. I was very disappointed to see the clouds roll in shortly after that and kind of gave up hope. At around 10:30 PM, I looked outside and saw that the moon was nearly at zenith and the skies were perfectly clear. I grabbed the Coulter and headed outside. This is the result. It's my best full moon shot so far. I'm very happy with the result. I hope to be able to get even more detail when I get the Dob Driver II installed and working.

The Moon is Full and at Perigee Tonight!

Tonight is a rare combination of two events. The moon is full and at perigee tonight. It's a bit cloudy right now, but I'm planning on being out there taking photos tonight!

Ambrose Liao