People

My brother is free from college...for now...so my wife and I met up with him and his girlfriend for a rather nice picnic and some meandering around a quarry.  It was such a nice day today.  We almost told them no when they asked if we wanted to join them...we had just gone on a 30 mile bike ride and would have happily sat down and relaxed for awhile...but instead we told them we would meet up with them.  I'm quite glad we did, it's always fun to hang out with him, and more and more I find his girlfriend to be quite interesting, fun, humorous, and a fantastic match for my brother.  Also, she promised to take me spelunking in upstate New York.  That won me over.

A Girl

This is my brother's girlfriend.  I didn't ask if they minded being posted all over the internets, so I made sure to choose photos that don't show faces. 

  A Boy

This is my brother.  I was trying to get some abnormal angles for both shots...I did better with this one.  The angle makes him look like some giant standing on his own personal island.  Very Gulliver-esque.

The Results

The results are in.
My experiment, though the conditions were not perfect, seemed to prove that the moon was not noticeably different from Saturday to Sunday.  You will have to pardon the branches and stuff in front of the moon, but in order to get it at 8:00pm, I just had to hope that the branches wouldn't affect the results.  I can't see how they would.  I was at a shelter on the Appalachian Trail at 8:00, and had no intentions of hiking a mile one way or the other to locate a clearing.  Here's what I have...

 Clear Sky, Unclear Skyline

The outline of the moon is pretty clear.  If only I wasn't surrounded by trees, the shot would have been perfect.  Note: this is the only time you will ever hear my complain about being surrounded by trees.

Combined

Here is Saturday's moon superimposed over Friday's.  The outlines match up perfectly.  I definitely don't see a difference in size.  Perhaps there was a difference in luminosity, but the tree branches may have screwed that part of my experiment up. 

The earlier part of my day was spent hiking a small trail with my wife that brought us to some vernal ponds and then we hopped on the Appalachian Trail and did about 6 miles before we found a good place to camp.

Vernal Pond

It's fairly crazy to be hiking through the woods and suddenly come upon a pond right in the middle of the path.  These ponds are only a few inches deep but have some strange animals and plants living in them.  Need proof? Look up Fairy Shrimp.

Eggs, Lots of Them

The only animal life we saw were eggs.  They were everywhere.  These Vernal Ponds will be filled with frogs soon.