Post Eclipse Post

I enjoyed watching last night's eclipse, but was dogged by a desire to experiment with various modes and exposures for most of the night. Out of 286 photos I took, only about a dozen are worth sharing. Of those, I whittled things down to the 6 best.

The Moon rose behind a bank of clouds that began to thin into partly cloudy, with the Moon being visible for a few moments at a time. So, I took this 8 second exposure while the clouds scurried in front of the Moon.



Then, the sky began to be mostly free of the clouds, allowing the Moon to shine forth in all her glory just as the Eclipse was beginning. This was a 4 second exposure to allow some detail of the clouds to be shown.


After a period of time, the Moon became covered by the Earth's shadow.


This is a slight over exposure of 0.62 seconds to bring out some detail of the eclipsed portion of the lunar disc. It also allows an appreciation for the beautiful red color that the Moon had begun to reflect, as all the world's sunsets shown through the atmosphere some 240,000 miles away.


This is the Moon in eclipse.

And here is what made this particular lunar eclipse unique, the Moon was with a few degrees of a bright star, and a bright planet. I have labeled the photo so you can identify the players.


Now, we have to wait until December 21, 2010 for the next total lunar eclipse in North America. Bummer. Maybe I'll have better equipment by that time so I can do some really geeky things during the eclipse!