I froze, but it was worth it. In fact, I had to submerge my hands in hot water to get the blood flowing after standing outside observing the Moon as the Earth stood between it & the Sun.



A couple of hours of not-all-that-riveting celestial activity & it was over, but not after capturing a couple of shots on the digital cam.



Anyone who has tried to just casually photograph the moon will know that when it's fully illuminated, it's near impossible to get a shot which actually looks like anything other than a fuzzy bright spot, let alone a Moon. Having a lack of sunlight reflecting back made it actually possible for once, so I took an absolute packet of shots.... but since the majority of them all look the same, I've included only the start, middle & end ones here! Okay, so they won't win any awards, but they look better enlarged, so click them to go to Flickr.



I now wish I had my camera snapping away while my fingers recovered from the freezing cold. There's a little condition known as Raynaud's syndrome (referred to as a phenomenon when I wiki'ed it!) which hits me when it get really cold. It effectively stops the blood flowing in one or more fingers & sometimes the toes & they end up white & completely devoid of blood. It doesn't hurt, but they can start to ache after a while. The cool part (or disgusting part, depending on your view of things!) is seeing the blood flow back into the fingers & the way it progresses back into the veins. That part can actually feel pretty strange but it's relieving getting the feeling back & knowing that nothing is just going to drop off!