Full Moon January 29, 2010 “Wolf” Moon

The full moon on January 29, 2010 was reported to be the largest and brightest full moon of the year. The size of the moon itself hadn’t changed, of course. The moon’s non-circular orbit put it at its closest to the earth for 2010. (It will actually reach the closest perigee for 2010 at 4:04 a.m. ET Saturday.) Despite the fact that temperatures were nearing the single digits, we went out into the yard to take a few pictures in the very bright moonlight, a sort of companion to the photos of the full moon and Mars that I took earlier in the day.Combined with the snow, it made for a very bright scene.

January's full moon is also called the wolf moon, from Native Americans who associated the January full moon with wolves howling in the cold. What was odd is that while we were outside taking pictures, we heard many dogs barking and howling in the distance.

Mars was also nearby in the sky, and despite the fact that some high clouds were moving in, the planet made a brief appearance in one of the photographs. It's that tiny dot of light off to the left of the first photograph, near the tree top. (Click on any photo for a larger size.)






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Full Moon and Mars, Clouds and Cold

It got into the single digits during the night, and there were some clouds. But, with the full Moon, and with Mars lurking nearby, it was hard to resist going out at 5:30 AM to try to catch a picture. The bright Moon gave the clouds a strange colored glow, almost a faint, pastel rainbow effect. Here are a few pictures; in one of them, you can see the faint dot of Mars in the upper portion of the picture in the gap in the clouds.





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My Cleveland “Sketchbook”

The weather and constant gray skies in January in northeast Ohio makes it difficult to find anything decent to photograph. So instead, I dug into my “archives” and pulled out some photo “sketches” of Cleveland that I’ve been working on in my spare time - and I finally finished it. Enjoy!



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Lake-Effected and Snow-Belted

November and December gave us only scant snowfall totals as a few big snowstorms and the normal Lake Erie snow machine had missed our area of northeast Ohio. But so far this January, it seems the lake has turned on the switch full throttle. Those of us living in the primary “snow belt,” which is known for its heavy snowfalls, are finally making up this week for what we missed this season.

It’s hard to take a photo in the snow without it looking like a black and white photo, so when I took my snowy walk around the yard, I tried to capture even the slightest bit of color I could find. There wasn’t much. I did manage to catch a large fox squirrel mid-leap as it was running for cover, although the heavy snowfall at the time makes him look a little blurry.









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