Ailsa and Dale Leftwich

20 February 2008

Lunar eclipse (the "blood moon")

Tonight I became quite fascinated by the lunar eclipse, "the last one until 2010" (okay, only 2 years from now). I also became quite interested in figuring out how to use my camera to take night shots, of the moon, so I took some 50 shots over the course of a few hours. I plan to be in bed before the eclipse is complete (because of a little girl who gets up every day by 5:30 a.m.), but I thought I'd post a few of my shots, as imperfect as they are.

The first was at the beginning of the eclipse, at 19:48 (f5.5, 1/125 sec, ISO 800)



This next shot was taken at 20:47, f5.5, 1/80 sec, ISO 400



The next two shots are the same, at 21:03, F5.5, 1 sec, ISO 400. I a) figured out that the slower the speed, the better a picture I would get, especially when the moon turned blood red, and b) found the tripod I haven't used in over a year.





Hence, the nickname "blood moon"



The next shot, taken at -23 degrees C, at 22:38, F5.0, 1/25 sec, ISO 400. As the moon became brighter, I had to adjust the shutter speed again





At the same time as the above image was taken here in Esterhazy, this is what the moon looked like in Argentina (image taken from http://www.aaaa.org.ar/eclipse/index_eng.html) - the Asociacion Argentina Amigos de Astronomia has much better equipment, obviously, and a different perspective


Finally, the last shot taken at 23:10, as the night gets ever colder, was at F5.5, 1/160 sec, ISO 400.

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