Supermoon 2011

I do love a full moon, especially when I'm at home in Winston-Salem and can watch it rise over the city skyline.

Interesting tidbit: The night I moved into the Roediger House, on November 8, 2003, there was actually a lunar eclipse, and it was a very cool reddish moon that traced a path up and over that city skyline view to the east. I stood in the chill air that night and watched it from the upstairs porch/balcony for quite a while. Unfortunately, I did not have a decent camera and so I have no pictures of it to share here.

Last Saturday's nighttime sky offered another fun night of moon-watching, thanks to the Supermoon of 2011. The moon's elliptical orbit means there will come periodic perigee-syzygy occasions; March 19 granted us this enjoyable spectacle. The sky tried to cloud over a tad but that just made it slightly more interesting. (Unfortunately, the next two nights were very overcast and there was only the briefest glimmer of this visibly enlarged moon. But hey: I caught a quick glimpse of Saturn to the north and west of the moon on Sunday night.)

Once again, the upstairs porch of the Roediger House proved to be an ideal vantage point. Wish these pictures could do it more justice.

The path of the rising moon made it emerge alongside the Wachovia tower at the south end of downtown; that's the dome-topped building you can see in most of these photos.