Saturday, June 26, 2010

Partial Lunar Eclipse Photos

Well, it cleared up nicely here and I managed to get up about 4am to grab a few photos. Of course, being at 4am, I wasn't at my most coherent and looking back at what I got, I could have played with some settings more and probably gotten better results. Still, they aren't a disaster so here goes.


My first shot was overexposed. Being 4am, I instantly started reducing exposure times and got no more good shots like this. In hindsight, I like this shot since you can see the reddened eclipsed side of the Moon even though the lit side is overexposed. I should have experimented more with this type of shot. It was 4am...that's my story and I sticking to it.


This shot exposes the lit side of the Moon a little bit better. Look closely and you can see some craters, rays and maria.


And I wrapped up the night trying to get an interesting tree in the foreground. I need to invest in a flash with a little more kick to really make this work better (could have done longer exposure or bumped up the ISO but wasn't thinking clearly because, well, you know).

A good dry run for the big total lunar eclipse later this year!

Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.

3 comments:

OrbsCorbs said...

Those are great pics. At 4 AM I can barely manage basic bodily functions. Good job, hale

drewzepmeister said...

Nice pics Hale!

kkdither said...

Thanks, hale. We had clouds. I tried to go out and see the ISS last night, but it was too hazy/cloudy. The moon was cool looking earlier in the night behind the haze.