I would normally not think that -20°C is any temperature for outdoors activities. But these clear cloudless nights are so rare that I felt it was a shame to waste it, especially now that there was a little bit of moonlight (37% crescent). I was determined to do some starry sky photography and had a…
After all the excitement yesterday, I forgot that I had some night sky pictures I took on Friday when we had one of these rare cloudless skies and almost no wind. Too bad there was no snow on the trees, but it’s such a long time I’ve made any major effort with night sky photography…
I was supposed to stay in Messlingen until Sunday, but already on Friday I had a feeling that something wasn’t right. I went skiing but my heart really wasn’t in it and it felt like I was doing everything in slow motion. I was totally uninspired by everything and didn’t even bother to look for…
Fox. Check. Ravine. Check. Full moon. Check. Clear sky. Check. Big Dipper. Check. Aurora. Check. For the longest time, I looked like it would be overcast today. But miracles do happen and the weather forecast indicated that it would be clear in the evening and sure enough, it was. The full moon was the reason…
Lovely late winter’s day. I spent it all inside, going through my stuff to find out what I could throw away. I found that I had boxes and boxes and boxes of… boxes. Can’t believe how many empty cardboard boxes I’ve kept over the years! When I was done with my sorting, I had my…
Photographing a moon crescent is to be much harder than photographing a full moon. There was an ever so thin crescent yesterday that I kept admiring from the bus window, only to see it disappear behind the clouds by the time we were in Loos. The crescent is still nice today and I admired it…
I had such a blast on Friday’s moonlight walk that I just had to do it again, even if the moon wasn’t quite full any more last night. I learned that the margins are very small when it comes to moonlight, and the moon phase is just one of the factors. There was a lot…
Thanks to the solar eruptions earlier this week, there was a fair chance of seeing some aurora. I was looking at the aurora forecast all evening yesterday but unfortunately it didn’t look like we would get any northern lights this far south. But since it was a full moon night and the snow cover was…
The weather forecast kept saying that last night would be completely overcast. The full moon and stars in the sky disagreed though and after all the snowfall earlier this week, the conditions were just perfect to try some night photography. As I was peering up through the tree crowns I noticed that the sky wasn’t…
[This (very long) story starts on Saturday 7 February] It’s full moon on Monday and the moonset/moonrise co-incides with sunrise/sunset. It can only mean one thing – I have a day off and I’m heading to the mountains. I’ve booked myself to the Messlingen hostel and it’s snowing, so it’s almost a repeat of my…