Waxing Gibbous Moon

This gets downright addictive. I was wanting to take more pictures as the moon waxes and wanes, but the weather's not cooperating.

Crescent Moon

I finally got the adapter so I can attach my camera to my Bushnell 60mm spotting scope, and have been playing around with it trying to shoot the moon. The exposure is okay, but I can't seem to get the shots really sharp. Still, fun to play with. Took some shots of the crescent moon 4 days past new last night, then took the barn door tracker setup out to the field and shot the moon as it was close to the Pleiades cluster and just over from Orion. Orion is my favourite constellation, easy to find, and lots of interesting things in that section of the sky. Have to see how much I can save this summer, I have dreams of a decent telescope.

Geese in the wind

Last night it looked like we may have been getting another good sunset, and I ran out to the back field, but it fizzled out by the time I got there. The geese have been coming over at dusk by the hundreds to settle in for the night on the marsh to the northwest. There was a strong wind blowing, and the entertainment began. As the geese came from the south and southeast in their V formations, and then lowered altitude towards the marsh, every now and then a sharp gust of wind would hit them. There were near collisions, geese getting flipped over, their tidy V formations suddenly being thrown into a jumble of birds that looked like a flock of drunken crows. I tried to photograph some of them, only got a few out-of-focus shots with the short lens and poor light, but here's a couple that show what a struggle the poor birds had in that wind. I am amazed at how quickly they managed to recover from being knocked around in the gusts.

One bird here got flipped right over.

Sunset

We had on/off clouds and wisps of rain yesterday, typical spring day. At sunset I noticed the sun peaking out from under a band of clear sky, and realized we may get a pretty sunset sky. I wasn't disappointed, got this "ring of fire". After a day of things going wrong around the house, at least this worked out.