lunar eclipse coming up

D

Dan

Member
Coming on the heels of my aurora post I thought I'd post this warning about an upcoming lunar eclipse. I've missed the last few eclipses, so I hope to be able to catch this one.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008 ... clipse.htm

There are many ways to photograph an eclipse. You can put your camera on a tripod and take a series of pictures from the same perspective and then stack them together, showing a series of copies of the moon as it moves through the sky and changes color and brightness. I've seen that before and it's a striking presentation. With a telephoto lens you could try getting a tighter shot, perhaps to capture the unique coloration of the moon during an eclipse. There's talk in the article about the moon turning turquoise, I'd like to get a shot of that.
 
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Thanks for the warning Dan. I would love to shoot that but I'm not exactly sure of technique. I only have the kit lens right now so I'm not sure I'll be able to shoot it.
 
Thanks Dan. I didn't know you could get a turquoise color. I thought the moon only turned red. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.
 
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About the turquoise color, I've read that that's caused by sunlight filtering through ozone in the Earth's upper atmosphere. I seem to recall also reading that some people don't believe it happens and that the images are just people who've set their white balance wrong.

http://www.mreclipse.com/LEphoto/LEphoto.html

There, that's a page I found that shows a bunch of different techniques. The one I mentioned before is about halfway down the page, they call it multiple exposure. It gets a bit technical with explaining how to adjust exposure, I'm not sure if you could rely on your camera's meter or not.. probably not. I don't know if I could use that exposure chart, I imagine I'd have difficulty estimating the percent of totality.

I'd like to try it, but I think I want to be getting some telephoto action with my 70-200. I just don't think I could dedicate the entire eclipse to getting a complete multiple exposure string. 200 isn't as long as I'd like for lunar photography, but I can get decent enough shots with that for it to be worth it. Maybe I could get fancy and try to do a time lapse sequence.
 
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IF any of you are in the Tallahassee area FSU's observatory is open from 8pm - 11pm. I will however be in my front yard trying to photograph this event.
 
Doesn't look like a great photo opportunity for us here on the east coast. If the weather is clear, we can shoot the moon cleanly, since it will be almost straight up in the sky...but the west-coasters will get the better compositions, as the moon will be nice and low on the horizon allowing for some of those cool multiple-exposure shots with the moon repeating up from the landscape in various stages of eclipse.

I may try to get a few shots of the moon during the eclipse...but I'm jealous of those with the opportunity to get some more dynamic images with landscape and foreground objects!
 
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Wow. Here in Detroit, as of 8:06 pm it's absolutely crystal clear and luna is just sitting there relatively low on the horizon - for the first time in a month. If it holds up, I'm going to see what I can with my 70-200 and my 5D.
 
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Okay - I have no idea what I'm doing, I can't get focus for diddly in the freezing cold, and my 200mm isn't nearly long enough ... so I'm just sitting back with my kid and enjoying the show. It's really cool. Nice for once to be able to see a celestial event from this area - usually it's far too cloudy.
 
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I got a few shots, focusing wasn't an issue (I just let it autofocus). It WAS bloody cold however, currently reading 8 degrees F. That kind of sapped my resolve, I only took a few shots from various stages. My camera is still in the warmup process, I wrapped it in a plastic bag and it's taking quite a while to heat back up. I didn't think to take my memory card out before I took it in, so I'll have to wait.

That's okay, I'm not in a post processing mood right now anyway.

It was interesting though. I don't think I've actually ever seen a lunar eclipse before. Or if I have, I don't remember it.
 
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Well the clouds tried their best to keep the show from me - but fortunately, there were a few breaks and the clouds were moving fast, so every few minutes, I'd get a 10 or 15 second window to shoot the eclipse before the next cloud bank rolled through. The clouds completely blocked the first half of the eclipse shadow coming across the moon, but from the halfway point to full eclipse, it let me get most of the stages. After full eclipse set in, the big tropical storm clouds moved in, and that was the end of the show for me. But at least I got to see the full eclipse.

Here's what I was able to get:

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Here's a layered composite of the stages - I stacked 5 images, and blended in 'lighten' mode:

93232696.jpg


All taken with my Sony DSC-H5, with DH1758 1.7x teleextender, most at full zoom (732mm equiv), on tripod, ISO80.
 
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Well I thoroughly mucked this one up. First off, my 70-200 is a bit undersized for lunar photography. Despite that, I didn't even use the full zoom! I thought I had, but I didn't. I don't know how, but I was rushed from being locked out of the house for a while and also having difficulty dealing with the cold temperatures, somehow I tried zooming in but didn't get it all the way.

Then I neglected to worry about keeping my shutter speeds up, so by totality the shutter speeds were up to around 5-6 seconds which meant the moon became blurred due to its motion.

Here's a montage of a few of the better shots I got. The near totality one is blown out around the illuminated part, but it's the best shot I got of the reddish eclipsed look.

[This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
 
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Very nice, all.

I ended up just observing it with my kid (age 8), who thought it was the coolest thing in the world. He went and got his drawing pad and made a "science log", drawing the moon every 10 minutes for an hour. It was very cool to see him all excited about something like this. He really freaked out when it started to turn orange.
 
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Nice work guys! I took some shots of the first half and the totality, but didn't take the second half due to tripod problems. I'll try to process them and post them tonight.
 
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nice images guys!
I tried with the 80-400 on a tripod, shooting raw.
None turned out. They are all blurry, I can never seem to get the moon sharp.
to qoute JC: "I have no idea what I'm doing" :)
 
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