The mooning...

We took our telescope out last night (an 8" Dobsonian) to look at the "super moon" and the rest of the sky. You don't need a telescope to get a great view of the moon. It's so close to earth that binoculars work very well (arguably better) for looking at the moon. But I took some nice photos by holding my Canon Elph up against the telescope eyepiece. Here's the moon around 9:30 pm last night...

And look! It's Gordon the astronomer-boy with his trusty sidekick Tristan.

The moon didn't look especially huge once it was up in the sky, but it was really, really bright.

Later on, around 11:30 pm, I took some photos of the moon over our barn and granary...

We had some cloud cover last night but it wasn't too bad.

We also looked at...

... Saturn! The picture's pretty crappy, because I couldn't hold the camera still enough. With our telescope you can actually see the Cassini division between Saturn's rings when conditions are right.

And Venus was a beautiful crescent last night. Looks more like a blob here! If you didn't know, Venus has phases just like the moon. Venus will be making a transit (passing between earth and the sun, and appearing as a dark orb moving across the surface of the sun) on June 5-6.

We looked at Mars, too, but I didn't take a photo.

It was a lovely evening to be out looking at the sky. Not too cold, but cold enough that we weren't covered in blackflies! The frogs and toads were singing away, and later on the coyotes started howling, which was pretty eerie.

Hope you had clear skies last night. On another note, Emily the kitten decided to go into heat to celebrate the full moon. ARGH! We were planning on getting her spayed soon (at six months) but I guess she wasn't prepared to wait. She's an indoor cat but we'll be extra-careful not to let her get outside before her spay. More on this fiasco to follow!

Have a good Sunday.