Total Lunar Eclipse - December 20/21, 2010

[Scheimpflug]

Just one day to go! Is anyone else preparing for the upcoming total lunar eclipse?





We're scheduled to have rain, so I suspect my view of the sky will not be very good.

More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2010_lunar_eclipse

[mo]

I did not know anything about it?...we get a good view of the moon coming up over the mountain....bar the rain of course.

[visualopsins]

Prepared here! Rain also scheduled. Past two days 9cm total with a couple of rain-free 8-hour periods, so there is hope. Lucky for me only a few steps from my door, so I will have everything ready to move as opportunity presents.

[visualopsins]

frm spaceweather.com:

[cooltouch]

Yeah, I'm planning on it. I'm pretty sure I posted a note about this a few weeks ago here. We in North America will experience the totality.

[Scheimpflug]

Hmm, sorry cootouch, I must have missed your post...

Yes, for anyone planning to catch it, tonight would be a good night to test your setup - check where the moon is at, experiment with settings, etc.

[kds315*]

test shot, fast moving clouds today, bad conditions...

f=800mm, f8, 0.6sec, ISO400

[visualopsins]

[cooltouch]

The conditions might not have been ideal, Klaus, but the mood is fantastic. I love that shot!

Yeah, I knew I'd posted a note about the eclipse here. But I did so as an addendum to a thread I started about pics I took of the full moon last month. It's at the end of the first message in this thread:

http://forum.mflenses.com/full-moon-november-21-t34432.html

I'm glad Scheimpflug made a separate thread, though. It certainly deserves it.

I'll be using my trusty old Century Tele Athenar 650mm f/6.8, but I dunno if I'll bother with a teleconverter. I plan to begin my photography before the eclipse occurs, and then take photos at set intervals as it progresses. When it's complete, I hope to create a montage of the entire eclipse with my photo editing software. That will be a first for me. I just hope the weather holds. It's gotten really warm and muggy today, which is usually a harbinger for a cold front with accompanying rains to push through the area.

Several months ago I took pictures of a moon rise and posted them here. The moon was almost a blood-red color at rising, which is why I went to the trouble. The color of the moon was very close to the way it will look during totality. I mention this because, if you're planning on taking pics of the moon throughout the eclipse event, be prepared to be shooting at a very dim moon during totality, which unlike a solar eclipse, lasts quite a while. I had to bump my camera's ISO up from 100 to 800 to record the moon rise pics at a halfway decent shutter speed to avoid the moon's motion-induced blur.

Also, if you've never witnessed a lunar eclipse before, be prepared to make a night of it. It takes several hours for the entire eclipse event to run its course.

[kds315*]

Looking forward to seeing your results Michael! I would be happy to see a "red moon" shot!

Btw. found a very interesting collection of old Classic Teleskope manuals + sales brochures
here: http://geogdata.csun.edu/~voltaire/classics/

[peterqd]

Michael, I know the exposure settings you use for normal moon shots. What settings would be appropriate during the total eclipse? Also here in UK I believe we will see only a partial eclipse this time - would the settings be the same as for a full moon?

[cooltouch]

The way I see it is this: even if it's just a sliver of the moon you're seeing, it's still reflected sunlight and that sliver is still bright. Plus you want the night to look black and not gray, so no I wouldn't change the settings as long as there's something of the unshrouded moon showing.

As I recall though, when the moon enters the penumbra, it will begin to dim and adjustments will need to be made at that point. Once it's within the umbra, that's totality, and that's where it will be very dim, and you'll have to be shooting at high ISO, open aperture and as slow a shutter speeds as you can. I hope I don't have to shoot below about 1/30 or I'm afraid I'll be getting blur caused by the moon's movement.

I don't have exposure information for this, although I'm thinking you might could find it if you googled for it. I might try this. Otherwise, I'll just take test shots to determine optimum exposure.

It's occasions like this where digital is totaly superior to film. To accomplish the same with film, I'd have to be using a telescope with a motorized equatorial mount and guide controls.

[cooltouch]

I found a good link for those of us in North America that describes the different stages of the eclipse and when they will occur.

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/total-lunar-eclipse-12-stages-101219.html

I'm keeping my fingers crossed here. The weather is starting to get rather iffy -- it's really warm and clouds are starting to roll in. But the skies overhead are still clear and I'm hoping that things will hold.

[TBaker]

We're supposed to get a wild nor'easter starting tonight so I'm not holding out.

Here is one I took in Feb of 2008.

[visualopsins]

Shadow and Substance has a nice animation and graphics plus informations about next month's (January 4) Solar Eclipse visible from middle EU eastward to India.

[cooltouch]

Here's a nice site with animated graphics on the partial solar eclipse that will be happening on January 4th:

http://www.eclipse.org.uk/eclipse/0122011/

[cooltouch]

Well, I hope you folks have better luck photographing the eclipse than I am. The sky here is completely covered by clouds. I'll stay up for a few more hours just in case it clears, but I doubt it will.

[mo]

I missed it...and I do remember your post about it... I hope the clouds part for you

[cooltouch]

Hopes are waning here. It's 1:35 AM and the cloud cover is thicker than ever.

[mo]

This is all I could manage...tonight...don't know why I thought I had missed it??
Taken with the Tamron SP500 on a tripod but no auto shutter available and not sure why it is so yellow? I had it on auto white balance.
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I just have to add I suffered for these shots...the mosquitoes were out in force!!!

[visualopsins]

Mo, you did fine! Sorry you had to suffer, are there no Tea Tree or Eucalyptus leaves to stuff in your pockets to repel those little buggers?

Moon was a total tease here. Between downpours of rain and hail were some fleeting glimpses of spectacularly clear seeing leading up to the event, too short to risk getting equipment soaked, then cloud-cover thickened obscuring all detail and diffusing the light all over the sky. Maybe I'll have better luck in 2094!

[cooltouch]

Congrats, Mo -- the yellow happens when the moon becomes mostly covered by the earth's shadow. Actually as the umbra's shadow progresses and during totality, it takes on a dim orange color.

I'm a member at the Texas Photo Forum and we have an active thread over there about the eclipse. Even though Houston was pretty well socked in there were others there who managed some very nice shots. Here's a link to the thread:

http://www.texasphotoforum.com/forum/open-talk/134718-lunar-eclipse.html

You'll want to page to 2 or 3 to view photos.

[mo]

Thanks for the explanation...I could not have asked for a better night the clouds left earlier in the evening....just the skill was lacking...oh well should get better with practice
Here are two more samples that I took later on when the moon was way above the horizon.
I also realised my white balance was not on Auto but another setting...arghh.I would love to get these clearer.

[mo]

I just re read your post Michael on the other forum...I had my ISO set at 400 and manually set the speed from 125-320 I think was the highest speed I used...F8 of course was not an option to change.
For better results I should have dropped the ISO to 100? I have to get it sorted in my head to how it all works with settings...

[cooltouch]

Um, I posted this note without knowing of your latest comment. Yeah, that would explain why things look a bit over exposed. But most of the detail was preserved. Read on . . .

Well the sharpness looks to be decent. I see some black mottled sort of clumping in the black of the photos. If these were my images, I would use the Curves function in my editing software to punch up the left side of the histogram, but I wouldn't do anything to the right. This will darken the images and bring out the detail.

I hope you don't mind, Mo, but I've taken your first image and put it through the Curves function then added just a bit of Unsharp Masking to it. This is what I got:



I'd say that's a pretty good photo, eh?