Amazing Spectacle: Total Lunar Eclipse Monday Night

[dogg57]

For a few hours on the night of Dec. 20 to Dec. 21, the attention of tens of millions of people will be drawn skyward, where the mottled, coppery globe of our moon will hang completely immersed in the long, tapering cone of shadow cast out into space by our Earth. If the weather is clear, favorably placed skywatchers will have a view of one of nature's most beautiful spectacles: a total eclipse of the moon.
More Info.......
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20101217/sc_space/amazingspectacletotallunareclipsemondaynight

 

[mudboy dave]

from 1:15 to 2:15 will be rough. man, work messes up everrything don't it

 

[PancoastDrifter]

My toes got a little cold but here I my shots.

 

[MarkBNJ]

Wow, very nice Pancoast. I got a few through totality as well, but nowhere near that nice. I was shooting at f5.6, 1/200, ISO 200 with a 250mm at full extension. I didn't set up a tripod - was just leaning against the garage - so I kept the shutter speed pretty fast (1/200 to 1/350). Care to share your settings?

Here are some selected shots through about 2:30. In our latitude totality seemed to be about 2:50-3:20 AM.

 

[PancoastDrifter]

Thanks. Your shots are great for no tripod. Amazing in fact. I was on tripod with a remote trigger, shooting 300mm w/ 2x extension on a crop sensor = 900mm. The top row was shot at F9 as the control (figuring that would be the sharpest with the lens setup) and the bottom row was shot at ISO 2500 as the control.

 

[whippoorbill]

Thanks for the great photos, Mark and PD. I'll keep coming back to these as a reminder of a super cool night under the eclipse.

Alfie and I joined up to watch the eclipse at a semi-dark-sky site near his home in Laurel Lake. I didn't bother with my camera, but Al brought along one just purchased and I'm waiting to see how well these turned out. The photos were hand held, so my hopes aren't too high.

Did you guys, or anybody else, see any Ursid meteors -- sort of a side show to last night's shadow crossing. I saw several very nice streakers.

Great night and, again, great photos, guys!

 

[manumuskin]

have to hit the hay before i work tonight.some of the pics turned out riught nice.I'll send you the good ones tomorrow and I have some pics to send Guy tomorrow too.ain't been gettin much computer time because of my taxi duties at christmas time.will try to get pics out and stone report tomorrow.
Al

 

[Boyd]

I didn't set up a tripod - was just leaning against the garage - so I kept the shutter speed pretty fast (1/200 to 1/350). Care to share your settings?

I didn't get a chance to watch or photograph myself. Those are quite good for handheld Mark. And very nice work Pancoast!

I've taken a lot of lunar photos with my Nikon D80 and 300mm telephoto. My experience is that I need really high shutter speeds and relatively small iris openings to get sharp photo's. I haven't got many (if any) shots that I liked at shutter speeds lower than 1/1000, and this is while using a sturdy tripod. Here's a shot from last summer.

Actually, I find a cloudy night sky more interesting than shots of the naked moon however, and those need longer exposures. It looked pretty clear last night, so I didn't see much potential for this kind of shot... and it was very nice inside next to the fire.

 

[MarkBNJ]

Thanks. Your shots are great for no tripod. Amazing in fact. I was on tripod with a remote trigger, shooting 300mm w/ 2x extension on a crop sensor = 900mm. The top row was shot at F9 as the control (figuring that would be the sharpest with the lens setup) and the bottom row was shot at ISO 2500 as the control.

So your aperture was closed right down. What shutter speed did you use? Must have been a long exposure.

How do you shoot ISO 2500 and not get a ton of noise?

And same question, I guess, to Boyd: if you're shooting a really fast shutter and are stopped way down, then I assume you're using very high ISO gain? I start to get noise at anything 400 and above, and I even got some last night at ISO 200.

 

[Boyd]

I like to shoot ISO 100 whenever possible, for the reason you describe. But my camera is a little older and newer models probably have faster sensors. One thing I've learned about both video and still photography: when you expose for the best image, it will look terrible until you edit it. Shooting the moon I underexpose considerably, to the point that you can barely see anything until it's tweaked in photoshop.

Just guessing.... If I had a better lens then I probably wouldn't need to stop down so far? I'm using a Nikon 300mm VR zoom. Not exactly cheap, but not the $$$$ you need to spend for really good glass.

 

[PancoastDrifter]

So your aperture was closed right down. What shutter speed did you use? Must have been a long exposure.

How do you shoot ISO 2500 and not get a ton of noise?

And same question, I guess, to Boyd: if you're shooting a really fast shutter and are stopped way down, then I assume you're using very high ISO gain? I start to get noise at anything 400 and above, and I even got some last night at ISO 200.

The ones with the F9 aperture were shot anywhere from 80 - 200th of a second and ISO 200.

The 2500 ISO ones were shot with noise reduction on high and about 1-2 second exposure.

It was a lot of switching back and forth on the controls to get both type of images. I shoot with a Nikon D90.

 

[piker56]

Thanks to all that posted pictures, they were great. My son and I were out to watch but we don't have a camera to take good night shots. It was a really clear night and it was neat to see the stars come out as the moon faded.
Greg

 

[Bachman's Ivory]

I mistakenly made another thread for my shot so I'll post here as well. Spectacular shots from all.

Some shots merged together.
This shows the red light at the core of Earth's shadow caused by sunlight filtering through the stratosphere, but also the "turquoise fringe" caused by our planet's ozone layer.

"I saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get you all
It's a pink moon
Hey, it's a pink moon
It's a pink, pink, pink, pink, pink moon.
It's a pink, pink, pink, pink, pink moon.

Yeah, it's a pink moon"

-Nick Drake - Pink Moon

And in case you missed it, here's the full eclipse in timelapse format

 

[PancoastDrifter]

JPL-NASA Lunar Eclipse Wallpaper Contest Yields Hundreds of Photos

The first pic is mine.

 

[Bachman's Ivory]

JPL-NASA Lunar Eclipse Wallpaper Contest Yields Hundreds of Photos

The first pic is mine.

Congrats!!! How awesome is that!! Front page of the Jet Propulsion Lab site, Congrats on the contest win!

 

[MarkBNJ]

JPL-NASA Lunar Eclipse Wallpaper Contest Yields Hundreds of Photos

The first pic is mine.

Sweet!

 

[Teegate]

I just noticed your post and that you won! That is awsome! And mentioning the pines is even better

Guy

 

[piker56]

JPL-NASA Lunar Eclipse Wallpaper Contest Yields Hundreds of Photos

The first pic is mine.

Fantastic!
Greg