Moon rising and sun setting

 

There have been some great skies for moon viewing this week, but I had missed the best moments so last night, at about 7.45pm, I arrived at a perfect viewing point and was waiting for moonrise, relaxing, enjoying the peace.

I was well prepared: I had two cameras, both with memory cards and charged batteries, I'd even found a moonrise calendar. Moonrise over Hemel Hempstead clearly said 20.11 - but at 8.25pm there was still no sign. I pondered for a while and then it dawned on me, so to speak, the 20.11 was GMT, and we are in BST.

What a plonker! I was an hour early.

I'm used to feeling a bit of an idiot, so I got over that gaff pretty quickly and just enjoyed the setting: cows mooing, the sun setting, briefly chatting with a couple of people walking their dogs - but most of all, drinking in the atmosphere and relaxing and enjoying the solitude.

So I spent about an hour and half up on a hillside on my own. It was worth it. Seeing the moon peep over the treetops was great -  and it rises so fast that I was happily clicking away with both cameras that I took with me for about 20 minutes before I took myself home.

The very first moon sighting - look carefully and you will spot it

The colours in the sky were not the pale turquoise and pinks of the night before, but the moon was a fab colour, starting quite red, becoming orange and slowly turning yellow and finally white as it rose higher in the sky. 

Here is a link to a bigger selection of the moon photos on Flickr: Moonrise album.

And here are some more of the sunset and cow photos I took while I was waiting for the moon to show up: Cows, at Boxmoor Trust, at Sunset