Shooting the moon in Marathon

We here at Letters From Texas Worldwide Headquarters don't often go into detail about our love for the Big Bend region of Texas, specifically a town named Marathon, although some might have noticed on the lefthand side bar the odd placement of the current weather in Big Bend, right under the odd placement of the current weather in Austin.

Then again, we here at Letters From Texas Worldwide Headquarters wonder how many readers mistakenly believe that those headquarters are actually in Austin, and not Big Bend? Everthinkathat?

Also in the lefthand sidebar, right under the weather, is a link to the live Marathon webcam, which Danny, the esteemed proprietor over at the Marathon Motel, re-aimed the other day to keep an eye on a fire in the mountains, and has apparently forgotten to re-aim back to its more picturesque view, but oh well.

So, while this has absolutely nothing to do with politics, it does relate to current events, at least in the sense of #supermoon being a trending topic on Twitter yesterday. And, I guess once the Republicans in charge over at the state Capitol figure out a way to screw up the moon, it will become political, and they'll get right on it - Perry will probably even declare it another one of his emergencies.

But until then, the moon, in its closest orbit to Earth in years and full last night, was gorgeous and unspoiled as seen from Big Bend last night at midnight, when I shot this photo:

When that photo turned out so nice, it inspired me, stupidly, to set my alarm to get up in time to photograph it again as it set over the mountains to the West. It was made more difficult because the sun was also rising at the time, but this is what I got:

So, next time there's an astronomical event, think about heading out to Big Bend. There's a reason they put that big expensive McDonald Observatory out there. You can actually see stuff.