The Mini Cold Moon

The Moon was the smallest it could be on Feb 24, 2024. Find out why!

This is the "Cold Moon" of Feb 24, 2024. It is also a "mini moon" because it is almost as far away from Earth as it can be, making it about 10% smaller. You'd never notice that with your naked eye though. It's still very bright in the night sky. And it was cold last night - 12F (-11C) when I took this image with a ZWO Seestar S50 "Smart Telescope."

It did it on a whim so I wasn't set up very well, but the hardest part was finding a spot that I could level the telescope on top of my car, which was still warm from me coming home from an evening event. As a result, by the time I ended up getting three shots of the Moon through the telescope, my phone battery died and I was forced to pack it up.

No worries though - my hands were freezing and I was ready for some heated mattress pad!

This is one of three very similar images captured by the Seestar, edited slightly to crop and sharpen things a little bit. For a small telescope, the Seestar really is great for just taking a "snapshot" of something in the Cosmos without setting up an entire imaging telescope rig to do it. What a great little Time Machine!