Okay, progress is being made. Having convinced my laptop to make like R2D2 and talk to the particle accelerator's computer network, watch this space for illustrated posts.
A 15-second exposure in the direction of the Orion Giant Molecular Cloud. There are some recognizable stars visible. Not bad for a mid-range digital camera. 2004:10:07 18:43:33
That picture of Orion over there? That's me being a total sucker for long-exposure photography. I tried to filter out the city lights as much as possible. This is a densely settled region, so there's a lot to filter.
15-second exposure of the Moon rising in the northeast. This one is unfiltered, giving some indication of the degree of sky-glow. 2004:10:07 18:37:10
For anyone keeping track, the timestamps on the photos are still Central Daylight Time. I'll change that eventually, but for reference, this shot corresponds to about 1:40 am on the 8th. Like I said about early-morning teleconferences in Calfornia...
My father is very interested in the notion of the crescent Moon rising "horns-up" in the mid-east, as this evidently plays strongly in the mythic symbology of ancient cultures in the region. You might call the orientation pictured here "horns-up," but it's worth pointing out that the moon has been up for an hour or so at this point, so it rose a bit rotated from that. I'll also make an effort to take one where the moon's not quite so overexposed at some point, too.
that is a wicked picture...i guess ive never been close enough to the equator to even think about how a moon rise would look. is this the highest resolution you have of this, or perchance are you going to be taking other similar pictures that my email account would like to have visit.
Yes, I have much higher resolution -- this is a scaled-down image. But with the Moon as severely overexposed as it is, there wasn't much point in posting a larger one. I'll try to get a better shot at some point.
Since Crystal expressed an interest, I set up a location to dump the unprocessed sky images.
http://www.astro.umn.edu/~mmilligan/photos/sky/
If there are other photos posted here that someone would like at full resolution, by all means post a request (here or by email) and I will see what can be done.