As the moon went from full to the half-moon stage over the past week, we had a lot of clear and mostly-clear skies.

Even though it meant being up in the middle of the night/early mornings, I found myself getting out and taking shots four out of six "nights" ranging from midnight to 4:30 AM Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I shot most of these with my Canon EOS 1D Mk III DSLR, using a 100-400mm lens and a 1.4x TeleConverter, giving me a total of 560mm "reach", but even then these that show "close" have been cloosely cropped to give a good look and show plenty of nice detail.

And it kept up as the moon went into the crescen stage, so twice I woke up in the early morning and got some photos!