Our closest celestial neighbour has kept us company for at least four billion years and has entertained our imagination in a variety of ways. It certainly has been involved in our maturation as a species with man's first step on a body beyond our planet during the latter part of the twentienth century and will, inevitably, be our first stop prior to any sort of manned travel to a further celestial body such as Mars. The moon has been a great source of education about our own planet's evolutionary history; it has entertained many inquisitive minds from earlier cultures and generations about the universe in general and man's role in particular; it has enriched the minds of young children taking their first look through a telescope and continues to impact our lives in ways we may or may not readily recognize including tidal forces and various natural rhythms and cycles.

Note: The image below is an extension of a prolonged effort to capture the rising full moon against the Temple of Poseidon (450-440 BC) in southern Greece and which was finally realized in early May/2005 and thereafter (for example, see here). The primary task in such an exercise is to reverse engineer as accurately as possible the perspective of the Temple of Poseidon with respect to its physical azimuth and altitude from my proposed shooting location northwest of the foreground and the primary road which connects Sounion with Athens along the west coast of Attica. Such a distance was both desireable and ideal so as to have a greater balance between the apparent size of the Temple of Poseidon in the foreground and Luna in the background and as confirmed by the image below.

The full moon captured below also happens to be a perigee moon, for its distance from earth, namely 357,144 km when the image was taken, is very close to the minimum theoretical perigee distance the moon can realize.

Note: For additional photos of the sun and/or full moon against other well-known Greek archaeological grounds and sites, please click here.