[X] My Assistant

[ustrax]

Guys...my current camera, as Doug knows (no, it's not Helen's!) is a Fuji finepix f610...
And I managed, for the first time, to get a decent image of the moon...in the past the only I could get was a mere white bright point...
Any tips regarding this specific camera and our satellite?...

[Stu]

This is slightly off-topic, I know, and I'm sorry, but I just read something Moon-related that really made an impression on me and set me thinking, and I just wanted to share it.

I'm sure most people out there will be familiar with the recent terrible and horrible events in Austria - the "dungeon girls" story - so I'm not going to go through the whole story. But I just read in a paper how two of the children, after emerging from their prison, reacted with shock and awe when they saw the Moon shining in the sky for the first time, and I found myself imagining what that would feel like... to emerge from such torment, in such a dark, claustrophobic place, and then find yourself under an enormous open sky, and then see a brilliant, almost blindingly-bright silvery white orb shining in it that you've never seen before... No wonder they were overcome.

We take the night sky for granted, don't we? We take the sight of a crescent Moon hanging above the western horizon, or a Full Moon shining above the local church in our stride.

I don't think I'll be taking those things quite so much for granted for a long time now.

( Story on The Sun newspaper website. ) Note to Mods: if you feel that link is inappropriate due to the nature of some of the images in the paper < Brits will know what I mean > , please feel free to remove it. Thanks.