GoodMorning and GoodBye FLOWER moon...

This morning the weather was kind to me. Not only did I manage to fall asleep early enough last night to be able to wake up at 4am, but the clouds didn't pull their "we're gonna make a clear sky turn overcast in 2 hours" routine like it has from 2-5am the past few days. I hesitated to get out of bed and put pants on to check if the moon would be visible but I am really glad that I did because today was the last day to catch a glimpse of this FLOWER moon. I'll explain more in a bit.



This is what I saw as went out to search for the moon. A crisp unshrouded waning crescent moon that had just risen above the cloud layer hovering above the Mt. Hamilton range to the east of me. I quickly ran back inside to grab my gear and spent the next hour enjoying my gift from the weather.



Here is a shot that captures the not quite black, not quite blue murky color that is dawn. I am almost certain that waning crescents at dawn are my FAVORITE kind of moon image to capture since they are so rare. And by rare I mean the combined factors of:
a) me being able to get up/stay up for them
b) cloud cover cooperating
c) me being able to get up/stay up and not give into warm bed syndrome



And here is the moon after a lens change from my 1000mm setup to my 50-500mm Bigma. There is not a hint of black in the sky anymore as dawn takes over even though the sun is still a half hour away from crossing the horizon.



20 minutes later the moon struggles to stay visible with the sun hot on it's trail. Can you find it in the upper right sector of the image? You might need to click the image for a full sized view, it is there I promise :)



Forget the fact that the sun will make the moon invisible to the naked eye soon, these clouds are about to overtake it and end my morning of moon shots. I can't complain though since I was about to run out of space on all of my memory cards, everything worked out just right. Again I would like to offer thanks to the cloud gods for giving me at least one morning this week with some waning crescent beauty.

Checking my local lunar data tables I can even see that this morning was the absolute last chance I would get to see the moon in this May "FLOWER" phase. Tomorrow morning the moon won't rise until 4:50am PST, and with the mountains in the way that means I wouldn't see it until about 5:10am and that is assuming absolute zero cloud cover. On top of the fact that dawn will have begun breaking about 5am making it nearly impossible to see the sliver thin moon with the sun hot on its tail. I think that even if there were no clouds tomorrow morning I would have about 10-15 minutes tops to capture the moon before it fades into the morning sky so I'm extremely pleased that I got the clear shots from this morning.