If It Was Any Bigger...

...I probably could have seen the footprints. Or at least the American Flag.

These photos were taken on January 10th. It was the largest moon of 2009, appearing 14% larger than normal, due to its elliptical orbit around the earth, according to NASA. I was driving home from drill at 5:15 pm (a long day) and I saw the moon rising above the hills behind CSUCI. I pulled over to take these photos with my digital Canon PowerShot S5 IS. The IS is for "image stabilization" and good thing I have that. The camera has 12x optical zoom and 48X digital zoom and when you are zoomed in that far, with out image stabilization or a tripod, all the pictures would be blurry. As it is, I rested my arms on the car window sill, and the pictures got even better after I turned the car off, and then also shut the radio off, as the bass was making the car vibrate.


I took most of these pictures with the camera on landscape mode.

This is the first photo I took, with the moon just peaking over the peaks.



A water tower in the shot for artistic flavor.

This is with out any zoom. The moon did not look that far away to me. I don't know what it is with pictures that makes everything look so far away.

Sometimes the camera wouldn't focus right and the moon came out too bright and you couldn't see any of the detail. When this happened I just tried again and it would focus a different way and get the detail I wanted.

The other interesting thing the camera did was when the detail was as clear as I wanted it, was it darkened up the sky around it. See the next picture (after this one below) to see how light the sky really was.

Pretty moon rise.

I like this one. There were birds in these trees, and they flew in front of the moon a few times, but I was too slow to get that picture.

One final picture of the moon low on the horizon.

Next I took pictures around 8 pm. This is taken from my front porch and this picture is only posted for perspective.

It is interesting that the moon appears whiter in this picture, as opposed to the it appearing more yellow when it was lower on the horizon.

And finally, this was when I ventured out around 11 pm. It doesn't look very big since you don't have anything to compare it to.




Here it is zoomed in on 48X. I really needed the Image Stabilization as I was holding the camera above my head and the moon would sway in and out of the picture. I would click as I saw it go past.

On my way in to drill on Sunday the moon was low over the western horizon.

Zoomed in, but not fully. This was around 7:15 am.

And for your final viewing pleasure...

This was the moon on Tuesday. I pulled off the road after agility lessons around 9pm. It is still big, but not as full. Camarillo isn't a very big town, and the agility is out in the farm land. It makes it nice and dark and gives good pictures.


I took all these pictures because I find the moon fascinating. I contemplate how for as long as man has been around he has been looking at the moon. I think about how our knowledge about it has changed so greatly. The moon seems close enough to touch some days, yet for thousands of years it was unimaginable man would ever walk on it. And then we did. The achievement of that is staggering, but for people of my generation it seems almost to be not a big deal since we grew up with "men on the moon" as a reality. For as long as man has been bipedal, he has been earthbound, but in our generation, he "slipped the surly bonds of earth." What could it possibly be like to sit on top of what is basically a giant fuse and fling yourself into the vastness of space and trust that you will land on a tiny orbiting rock? Then stand on that rock and look at your home planet from so far away on such foreign soil?

I find space in general equally awe inspiring and worth my attention. I wish I knew more about it. When out at night and looking at the stars (which are either hidden from view by smog and light pollution or shining brightly depending on where I am) I always reflect on how tiny earth is, and yet how important it is to us who live here. Space seems to go on forever, yet is has an end. What could possibly be on the other side of space? Is it really possible ours is the only solar system with a planet that supports life? When looking at stars with my naked eyes, am I only seeing stars in our own galaxy?

So I took these pictures of the moon because of all these questions and emotions. I don't have a space suit, and even if I did, I'm not sure I would travel (who would take care of the dogs?,) but I wonder if that will truly be an option some time in my life.

I didn't do a great job explaining how I feel about the moon and space. Maybe I'll dig up the poem I wrote about it and share that, if I can find it.

PS- Thanks to my dad for showing me the craters on the moon through a telescope as a child. I also saw the beauty of the rings of Saturn and the not so interesting blob that is Mars and Venus. And thanks to my mom who I believe bought my dad the telescope.