The moon's orbit is now at its
closest point to the earth (paragee) and will not be this close for another sixty-nine
years. This combination of its position with the annual positioning of the sun in
its orbit as it is now also at its closest point in its orbit to the earth in the
yearly cycle. The two heavenly bodies gravitational forces will have a noticable
effect on the earth's biosphere as the atmosphere and hydrosphere each will react
to the increased gravitational pull resulting in high tides on the oceans coasts.
This has happened countless times in the past and the earth and its inhabitants
have survived.The picture above was taken at about 8:30 this morning looking West and the moon seems remarkably large in the sky. The picture on the right was taken at the same time and in this image we have boasted the light levels a bit and this is pretty much what it looked like with the naked eye at the time. While to the East the sun was beginning its arrival over the horizon.
close to the time of the two pictures seen looking at the morning moon while the
picture below shows the sunrise at 9:17. The upper clouds are moving as quickly
this morning as they did last night when I went out to take some pictures of the
moon as it shone intermittenly through the fast moving upper cloud that was streaming
by.These images do not do justice to the remarkable appearance of the clouds, the brillant moon and the stars and planets that flashed in the sky with great clarity but alas digital photography does not yet hold the capability of capturing these elusive images.
What we do have are some interesting distortions of the moon witht the imposing clouds rushing by quickly enough to actually blur the image.
As so
often happens one thing leads to another. This image was taken at the same time,
around 10:40 Wednesday night and shows the glow of a tree lit by the light of a street
lamp. When I took this picture I realised that it would not really show the beauty
to be seen but would give a hint at the remarkable charm of a frost covered tree
in the blue darkness of a brightly lit moonlit night. This picture had I used film
would have been much more revealing.Indeed this attempt to photograph the moon lead to me taking a walk around the neighbourhood and photographing the lighting displays all within a block of our house.