Stargazing Total eclipse of the moon tonight.

[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.