- #36
Borg
Science Advisor
Gold Member
- 2,179
- 4,207
Same here. Glad to see that some of the PF'ers were successful in seeing it.davenn said:thanks for everyone posting their pix
Same here. Glad to see that some of the PF'ers were successful in seeing it.davenn said:thanks for everyone posting their pix
It is red all the time, but due to the high contrast it is hard to see that until most of it is in the shadow.JohnnyGui said:Beautiful photos guys! I've got one physical question regarding lunar eclipses.
I know that the moon turns red because of the sunlight passing through our atmosphere which absorbs other frequencies and bending the red wavelength to the moon's direction. But why is it that the moon immediately turns red all of it at once only when it's mostly behind Earth's shadow? I'd expect that as Earth's shadow consumes the moon, the red colored moon surface would gradually increase until it's all red. Instead, the moon is partly black first by Earth's shadow until it's almost completely black just to turn all red immediately. Why is that?
mfb said:It is red all the time, but due to the high contrast it is hard to see that until most of it is in the shadow.
It's like trying to see stars during the day: they are there - but you don't see them as the sky and everything else is too bright so your eyes don't adapt to darkness sufficiently.
mfb said:Well, the "shadow" is red. See post 29 where the red part is clearly visible as the image has enough dynamic range.
DennisN said:It's nice seeing photos coming in. I'm thinking of maybe doing some montage with the different phases of the eclipse, I took a load of photos. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow and post here later.
JohnnyGui said:At 0:15 you'll hear the guy explaining that the moon has to be fully black first before it immediately pops in a red color instead of red gradually taking over. That's what surprised me. His explanation after that didn't make it clear for me why that happens but your explanation about red having a stronger contrast only when the moon is almost dark made sense to me.
DennisN said:I did a montage which I post below.
DennisN said:Regretfully I could not take any good closeup of the Moon when the eclipse was at maximum; my camera could not focus, which I guess was because the available light was too dim.
davenn said:Big, huge, major, mega ( is that enough ) hint ... NEVER use auto focus ALWAYS use manual focus
for any and all astro photographyDave
DennisN said:Thanks . Regretfully my basic camera lacks manual focus. Hopefully I will have a better camera in the future. And a telescope .
I did a somewhat less sloppy version, but the full eclipse pic is eh, somewhat pixelated , I have not got any better photos than these. I hope to see more photos from others in this thread, don't be shy...DennisN said:Note: The Moon did not change size during the eclipse, I've just been a little sloppy when I did the image
rootone said:I took a few pics with an ordinary but quite good digital camera.
Although I tried to get away from background streetlights and stuff I think that general light pollution was a problem.
They might come out OK though if I mess a round with photoshop a bit.
Visually for me in Ireland it was less impressive than I had hoped for.
Visibility was clear but it just looked like an ordinary full moon gone dark, not very noticeably red
DennisN said:Hopefully I will have a better camera in the future. And a telescope .