Stargazing Total eclipse of the moon tonight.

[hypatia]

I made a small bonfire and tried to keep warm, even made a few neighbors come out to watch. It was just grand, and did I mention COLD?
Love the photos, Moonbear. You did a really good job of them!

 

[GeorginaS]

Same here! The eclipses have either been at some weird hour I couldn't be around for (or awake for), or on cloudy/rainy days, or just when I've been too busy to go outside and look, so this is the first time I really got to watch the whole thing progress. Really neat to watch!

Exactly! And, really neat to watch.

The moon's not going entirely dark here -- "here" being Edmonton, Alberta -- but the sliver of light is going around the bottom clockwise. It's staying mostly copper coloured.

 

[Kurdt]

The colour is indicative of atmospheric conditions at the time of eclipse for the reasons George Jones mentioned. I just wish I lived on the other side of the hill :(.

 

[Moonbear]

Exactly! And, really neat to watch.

The moon's not going entirely dark here -- "here" being Edmonton, Alberta -- but the sliver of light is going around the bottom clockwise. It's staying mostly copper coloured.

Yeah, I just noticed that. The cloud cover has returned here, so I guess I got to watch the eclipse and not the "recovery" from it. I was trying to figure out where the moon went and was surprised to see the sliver visible is now on the bottom of the moon, and not on the side where the shadow first appeared. I guess I was expecting the shadow to just continue sliding from one side to the other.

I read somewhere earlier that it would look redder if there were more particles in the atmosphere (like dust or clouds).

 

[russ_watters]

As I'm sure you guys can imagine, I took quite a few pics. Here's one from 9:49, EST (outside of Philly). The forcast here was for clouds up until 11 or 12, but they cleared-out at 8:30 instead.

The camera was a 4 year old Fuji 4mp, 10x zoom (at max zoom). I think the exposure was 1/2 sec.

As much of an astronomy buff as I am, this was the first total eclipse I've seen. Through my entire life, I've just had bad luck with eclipses.

 

[Moonbear]

As I'm sure you guys can imagine, I took quite a few pics. Here's one from 9:49, EST (outside of Philly). The forcast here was for clouds up until 11 or 12, but they cleared-out at 8:30 instead.

The camera was a 4 year old Fuji 4mp, 10x zoom (at max zoom). I think the exposure was 1/2 sec.

Sure, make my photos look like fuzzballs by comparison now.

That's a great photo! I really need to get a tripod for such occasions so I can do long exposure shots (and I think I need to duct tape the cat to a chair to keep her from running out the door around me too, which was rather distracting).

 

[binzing]

Ugh...I wish we'd been able to see sky!

 

[russ_watters]

Evo, I'm a big fan of through-the-trees pics of the moon too. They add more to the scene. Here's one from earlier:

Unfortunately, it wasn't possible to get the background bright without washing-out the moon (unless you cheat and do a composite, which I might). It is only really possible when the moon is shining through thick haze, which acts as a diffuser for the light. I do have a really good shot like that from a few years ago...

 

[Moonbear]

Ooh, this site is cool. Wish I had found it before the eclipse so I'd have known which constellations I was looking at around it.

http://shadowandsubstance.com/

 

[russ_watters]

Sure, make my photos look like fuzzballs by comparison now.

That's a great photo! I really need to get a tripod for such occasions so I can do long exposure shots (and I think I need to duct tape the cat to a chair to keep her from running out the door around me too, which was rather distracting).

Thanks.

That kind of camera is only about $300 these days and the long zoom and manual features come in handy sometimes. Also common now is a 2 second timer for use on a tripod so you aren't touching the camera when it fires.

I think the max exposure on the camera is 15 sec. Not a lot, but enough that galaxies and nebuae start showing up when you take wide field pics.

 

[russ_watters]

Btw, I took pictures about every 15 minutes from about 8:45 to 11:15, so this weekend or the next time I find myself in front of the tv for a few hours, I'll process them and stack them together into an animation.

 

[binzing]

What program do you use to make animations?

 

[glondor]

Nice shots folks, Better than mine for sure. The kids and I tried tho. Ended up making ghost shots for fun. brrr cold outside.

 

[russ_watters]

What program do you use to make animations?

Photoshop Elements. It takes the layers and turns them into an animated .gif

 

[~christina~]

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7655/dsc0331og9.jpg before

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/1356/dsc0395pl9.jpg after

I shot these from 3rd story of building until awning covered the moon =( so I couldn't get the fully shadowed moon shot. It was really tough to shoot the moon with autofocus since there were so many clouds and thus bad focus for much of them but some came out good by chance.

Cropped of course. (this is where 10.2Mp comes in handy)
and unfortunately the window ledge was my tripod...=(

 

[GeorginaS]

Amazing photos christina and russ_watters! Those are even better than the real-life view I had. But I don't have any equipment, just the naked eye. Maybe I need some stuff.

 

[~christina~]

Amazing photos christina and russ_watters! Those are even better than the real-life view I had. But I don't have any equipment, just the naked eye. Maybe I need some stuff.

Thanks, it was weird since with my own eyes looking at the moon I didn't see as much until I zoomed in.

you could get some stuff and take great pics as well

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Because the sky is blue in the daytime!

The moon is not completely dark because the Earth's atmosphere act as a lens and bends some sunlight such that this light reaches the Moon even when the Moon is entirely within the Earth's shadow. The Earth's atmosphere scatters blue light off in all directions, so the the light that reaches the Moon is missing much of the blue and consequently looks red.

I had heard that it was because looking toward the Earth from the Moon, you would see a ring of sunsets all around. Or is that another way of saying the same thing?

 

[russ_watters]

Kinda, yeah. From the moon, it would look something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse

 

[George Jones]

I had heard that it was because looking toward the Earth from the Moon, you would see a ring of sunsets all around. Or is that another way of saying the same thing?

Yes, it is.

The blueness of the daytime sky, the redness of the Sun at sunrise and sunset, and the redness of an eclipsed moon all have the same cause, the scattering of blue light from air molecules, and from dust particles. Take a look at the top diagram from http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html" on Baez's site, and imagine that the moon is farther to the right.

I read somewhere earlier that it would look redder if there were more particles in the atmosphere (like dust or clouds).

Since dust particles contribute to the the random scattering of blue light, they contribute to the reddening of sunsets and lunar eclipses.

 

[GeorginaS]

Ooh, this site is cool. Wish I had found it before the eclipse so I'd have known which constellations I was looking at around it.

http://shadowandsubstance.com/

Excellent site, MoonBear. That bit of animation explained a whole bunch of what I watched last night.

 

[binzing]

Grr... I need to get Photoshop. All I have is GIMP right now, but maybe it has that function. I just got it, so I'll have to look.

 

[Evo]

Great pictures christina!

 

[~christina~]

Great pictures christina!

Thanks Evo

 

[russ_watters]

Here's the animation I made of the eclipse:

 

[lisab]

Wow, Russ, that's a cool animation!

You captured something I observed but didn't understand: How come when the Earth's shadow initially covered the moon, the shadow line seemed fuzzy and the moon was orange-toned, but when the Earth's shadow moved off of the moon the shadow line was very well defined and the moon was very bright white? Was it because it was later at night, and the sky behind was darker...?

 

[russ_watters]

There are different exposure lengths to compensate for the moon getting dimmer as it is eclipsed. Some are composites as well, to get both the dim red eclipsed part bright enough to see without blowing out the rest. Also, there are different processing and quality levels at work there.