Last Moon of 2008, with Venus and the Boulder Mountains

[astrostu]

Well, I spent part of my New Years Eve at the telescopes. Unfortunately, gusts upwards of 40 mph (65 kph) shook everything that I couldn't do much. Nor would the clouds let me photograph the Pleiades, which is what I wanted to try out with my "new" 70-200 f/2.8.

I did get in a few decent shots, though. The first one was at 200 mm f/3.5 and shows the 16% crescent moon with earthshine towards the top and the planet Venus towards the bottom. The second was an experiment that I plan on fleshing out at a later date (when I can find a good location and place to set up a tripod) which shows the moon and part of the Boulder Flatirons (East part of the Rocky Mountains). Unfortunately, by the time I took that one, Venus had set.