the moon and Venus

Did you have clear skies on Friday night? Did you get a glimpse of the moon and Venus almost kissing? It was a pretty sight. I took this picture just around sunset (bigger view here). It looks brighter because I had a longish shutter speed. I wanted to show the horizon, too, so was going to wait until later, but that cloud bank looked like it might be trouble. I had to go for it now. I used my wide angle lens in portrait orientation for this shot, but it wasn't zoomie enough.I switched to my long lens and took a bunch of pictures, changing shutter speeds. I wish now that I'd used RAW format. I suppose I didn't expect to get anything very good, but am pleased with the outcome.

I like that this one shows the shadowed part of the moon (much more apparant in fullsize) .... .... but this is my favourite. You can't see it because the picture is compressed for posting on this blog (go here for fullsize. You can actually see the craters on the moon (that's why I wish I'd taken it in RAW ... it would have been awesome blown up).This one was taken with the shutter open for something like a full minute. Not a good picture, but it shows how much things move in a short amount of time.