An excursion to our Müllberg

When I told Zuleikha that today at 20:35 we’d have a full moon rising, she wanted to see it with her Nikon 8×25 binoculars. So we drove to a nearby site to which officials gave the nice name “Oberwaldberg” (I suppose because you can see over the forrests, as you will see in one of the photos I took). But it’s in fact our garbage hill, so for me it is (and stays) our “Müllberg”.

It was quite nice. Zuleikha couldn’t believe how big the moon was when coming around a corner there, and I shot it with my 25mm (50mm-equivalent) lens like all other photos of today:

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When I reached the top, both Mitchie and Zuleikha were laying on their backs already, gazing at the stars. I told them that if we come back in about two weeks and the weather would be as nice as today, they’d see lots more, so this is what she wants to do. She was quite amazed that she could actually see the stars moving without any tools, just laying there and looking up (of course we are moving on our rotating earth, but that’s another story, and Zuleikha knows that already).

I also looked around a bit, and took a photo in the direction of Frankfurt:

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And after going downhill again and talking about red torchlights (which wouldn’t affect our night view that much as white ones), we sat down on some rocks under some trees. I saw the big dipper, so I knew that to its right there was Polaris (and a bit further, Cassiopeia). So I pointed up 50 degrees to my right and said: “Polaris”.

Zuleikha asked how I could know this, so I explained, and I wanted to show her that this one wouldn’t move across our skies like the others do. So with the “Live Composite Mode” of my camera, and 15 exposures of 60 seconds each, I showed her:

7df_8292120-polaris

She asked if they would have astronomy lessons in school, and I said yes, probably in physics. And now she cannot wait for that as well.

While walking back to our car, the moon was pretty bright already, so Mitchie and Zuleikha began to sing “Moon Shadow”.

So, a nice evening (and she loved to have been up until after 10pm).

Thanks for reading.