The Moon...

Just a quick post tonight.  I managed to finally get my telescope outside for a short stint - though it's been quite cold of an evening (and during the day truth be told).  It's a full moon at the moment, and as anyone who follows any sort of social media will have probably read many times over, it is the time of the Super Moon.  Far from being a time when caped vigilantes are lit by the pale light reflected by the surface of the moon (sadly), it is instead the time of the moon's perigee - where it approaches Earth most closely in it's orbital cycle.

In any case, with my telescope outside I tried to take some shots of what it looked like using my phone. Given this is far from being an ideal set-up for astrophotography, it was quite difficult.  The brightness of the moon through the eyepiece was too much for my poor phone, and trying to actually pin the moon down so a photo could be taken was an annoyingly constant battle.  In the end I reduced the aperture of the telescope by using some cardboard with a hole in it - this helped to reduce the brightness.  The rest was down to my shaky hands and the fact that your garden variety iPhone is not really designed for the task of astrophotography, sadly.

In any case - here are some shots:

Cheers,
Giles.