Ring around the Moon

Taken last night. As the snow storm moved in, it was preceded by high altitude ice crystals which created a 22-degree halo around the moon. My widest-angle lens couldn’t encompass the whole thing, so this is ham-handedly stitched together from two separate shots. Note Orion in lower left, Pleiades in lower right.

This was the first series of photos taken on the repaired tripod. A fair amount of “slippage” is noticable in some of the photos… the hinge isn’t nearly as rigid when locked as the original. Sigh. Well, hopefully tomorrow’s test firing of the RSRM – the last one ever – will go off on schedule and before my camera lens, and hopefully the tripod will holdup. I expect there to be a lot of Horrible Little Brats running around.