Marken Lighthouse, IJsselmeer, the Netherlands

Dutch ice fishers watching the snow moon!, originally uploaded by B℮n.

Marken is a peninsula in the IJsselmeer, the Netherlands, located in the municipality Waterland in the province North Holland. It is a former island, which nowadays is connected to the North Holland mainland by a causeway. Also, Marken is a well-known tourist attraction, well-known for its characteristic wooden houses.

The biggest full moon of 2009 could be seen on the 10th of January. Above photo was captured on 10 January around sunset. The giant moon was rising in the east. It was the biggest and brightest one of 2009, sure to wow even seasoned observers.
Earth, the moon and the sun are all bound together by gravity, which keeps us going around the sun and keeps the moon going around us as it goes through phases. The moon makes a trip around Earth every 29.5 days. But the orbit is not a perfect circle. One portion is about 50,000 km closer to our planet than the farthest part, so the moon's apparent size in the sky changes. Saturday night the moon will be at perigee, the closest point to us on this orbit. The biggest Full Moon of 2009 and it will appear about 14 percent bigger in our sky and 30 percent brighter than some other full moons during 2009, according to NASA. A similar setup occurred last December. This month's full moon is known as the Wolf Moon from Native American folklore. The full moon's of each month are named. January's is also known as the Snow Moon. At moon rise, the moon will appear even larger than it will later in the night when it's higher in the sky. This is an illusion that scientists can't fully explain. Some think it has to do with our perception of things on the horizon vs. stuff overhead.

Photo of the lighthouse taken at Marken island. Ice fishers walking on the ice-fields of the Gouwsea. Looking out over the infinite sea and it seems they stopped to watch the biggest and brightest moon of 2009. I took this photo from the southern dike. Besides this amazing moon rising there was also a beautiful sunset on the opposite site.

The lighthouse 'Horse of Marken' stands on its own tiny island at the end of a narrow causeway and is almost completely surrounded by water, which makes its location so photogenic. Particularly in winter, when after a long period of frost during which the IJsselmeer was largely frozen over the thaw set in and the ice was starting to drift you could shoot spectacular pictures here. These two fishermen went with a sliding carriage, fishing net and an axe for ice fishing like their ancestors in Marken. Finally after 12 years without ice they could go ice fishing again. Fishing for sparkling and flounder was a nice additional income in those days. It looks like fun but not without risk. In the old days fishermen felt with regularity in a ice-field hole and became super cooled or even drowned.