Trying to spot Saturn last night...

...as apparently it's very easy to spot right now with the naked eye...got a nice picture of the moon (which shows off how good my zoom lens is, quite incredible really)...but it was just too overcast to see anything much else, in fact, at 11pm I did a quick scan of the entire sky and counted exactly one visible star...might give it another go tonight if it's less cloudy... ;)
Update (@16:00hrs) - looking good so far! ;)

Send your name to the moon!

Having already sent my name to Mars (project closed in 2002 and I only just get around to picking up my certificate, what am I like?) -

- so when this one popped up I thought "Why not?"...if you want to join me/us then you'll have to be quick - the moon project closes tomorrow!

Send your name to the moon!

Oh and for bonus points NASA have just launched a new super friendly image and video portal (containing 140,000 images from space history)... ;)

The answer...I think...? Moon vs Camera

...to this question, found here (in full) - The summary is as follows -
{snip}"The explanation is believed to be as follows. We 'know' that a cloud that is overhead will be larger than when it moves towards the horizon. And an airplane that is a mere speck on the horizon becomes large when it is overhead. And we are all familiar with standing under a tree which seems enormous, yet at a couple of hundred paces seems insignificant. It would seem that so much of our world is interpreted this way that we are ill-equipped to cope with an object like the moon, that subtends the same angle at the eye, whatever position it occupies in the sky. And so our brain 'interprets' the image that it 'sees', and tells us that the moon is larger than it really is".{/snip}

Still not entirely sure! But it does look like it is the brain at fault rather than the camera...*thumps head a few times* >;P

Why does the moon...

...look so *small* in photographs?

It seems about 5 times that size when I look at it IRL, why on earth would that be? Some odd optical effect of the eyes? My brain re-prioritising it for some stupid reason? I must google this at some point, can't be just me...and "the camera never lies"...and did I *really* never take a picture of the moon before??