This is what the California State Capitol Building looked like on New Year's Eve 2014. The state Christmas tree, with it's beautiful star tree-topper is on the right.

This was taken with my very special Christmas present, a new Nikon D5300 camera with kit 18-55mm and 55-300mm lenses. I also have learned how to stack images in Photoshop, and this image is a stacked collection of 5 images in total. These were taken at ISO 2000 with the telephoto lens at at f/10 @ 1/20 sec; f/4.5 @ 1/160 sec, 1/80 sec, 1/40 sec, and 1/25 sec to give a variety of exposures for the stacked result.

Photograph of the "Blood Moon" during the 14/15th of April lunar eclipse. The Moon was located in the constellation Virgo, and the bright star next to the Moon is Spica.

Fortunately, the sky was clear at this time, though high clouds had occluded the view before and shortly after this. These two photos were taken at 1:04 and 1:06 AM, and the peak was around 12:45 AM, so you can see a little white reappearing at the bottom of the Moon as it starts to move out of the Earth's shadow.

I took this photo in a park near my home, and the automatic irrigation sprinklers turned on as I was taking the last photo. I got a little soaked, but I managed to keep the camera mostly dry.

This was taken with my Olympus FE-4000 point-and-shoot digital camera using a tripod and the night mode setting. I wish the camera would accommodate a telephoto lens so I could have gotten a closer view. The viewfinder didn't show me anything until I pressed the shutter button to snap the picture. I had to use my cell phone camera placed atop the camera to orient it in the right direction, and then take multiple photos with the Olympus, making minor corrections in alignment after each shot, to get the Moon and Spica centered in the frame.

Photograph of the "Blood Moon" during the 14/15th of April lunar eclipse. The Moon was located in the constellation Virgo, and the bright star next to the Moon is Spica.

Fortunately, the sky was clear at this time, though high clouds had occluded the view before and shortly after this. These two photos were taken at 1:04 and 1:06 AM, and the peak was around 12:45 AM, so you can see a little white reappearing at the bottom of the Moon as it starts to move out of the Earth's shadow.

I took this photo in a park near my home, and the automatic irrigation sprinklers turned on as I was taking the last photo. I got a little soaked, but I managed to keep the camera mostly dry.

This was taken with my Olympus FE-4000 point-and-shoot digital camera using a tripod and the night mode setting. I wish the camera would accommodate a telephoto lens so I could have gotten a closer view. The viewfinder didn't show me anything until I pressed the shutter button to snap the picture. I had to use my cell phone camera placed atop the camera to orient it in the right direction, and then take multiple photos with the Olympus, making minor corrections in alignment after each shot, to get the Moon and Spica centered in the frame.