Sunday 20 March 2011

Clear Skies

The sunny days have encouraged the blossom to burst on the trees. This is our Purple-leaved Plum in the front garden. The Wild Cherry Plum and the Blackthorn in the hedgerows are also blossoming and turning the roadsides white.
Clear skies also meant that we had a good view of the full moon last night, which was a super perigee moon, the largest in 20 years. This time (after my shaky ISS photo!) I used a tripod and played with the camera settings.
The moon looked bigger and brighter than usual (14% larger and 30% brighter according to NASA), as it reached its closest possible orbit around the Earth of approximately 212K miles away, which won't happen again until 2029.
This shot was taken beside the Wild Cherry Plum near our front garden.
I also managed a good photo of the constellation of Orion.

2 comments:

Mac n' Janet said...

Loved the picture of Orion! What a deep beautiful sky you have.

thesnailgarden said...

Thank you Sue and Janet. We were very lucky to have such a clear night. Sue, I would recommend a tripod - it made such a difference.
best wishes, Pj x