From Last Year: Eclipse!

One of the last things i shot for the paper last year was the only lunar eclipse that would happen on the Winter Solstice in my lifetime. Naturally the clouds would prove troublesome.





A composite of the first half of the eclipse.

Earlier in the evening, i shot a quick timelapse of the moon rising to test out how the moon would look, good focal length range, etc. I ended up putting a 2x teleconverter on a 400/2.8. I tried adding a 1.4 onto that but the images really lost sharpness detail.

Clouds are the bane of my existence when it comes to shooting the night sky. The eclipse would start around 1:45am (give or take a few) and i really wanted to do more than just "shoot the moon"; those photos tend to be bland. Instead my intent was to photograph the first half at home and then drive downtown to city hall and try to get the Christmas tree or anything in the foreground of the shot.

The clouds opened up and i started shooting on my back porch with 2 cameras; one wide to try and get the trees and environmental shots and one focused on the moon. Now the moon is moving; at 800mm the moon will go through the frame (top to bottom) in a few minutes. This eclipse was almost straight up and my little basic, Bogen tripod head kept slipping because of the sheer weight of trying to point a 400/2.8 + tc + D3 at an extreme angle. This resulted in a LOT of cursing, camera slippage, some blood and the occasional photo of the moon.



17mm/30 seconds on a D700 with the moon at total eclipse. Its magnitude appears not much brighter then the neighboring stars.

I got the entire first half of the eclipse. Here's where I messed up. Instead of making sure i had a dead solid, good exposure of the blood red moon, i booked down to City Hall and tried to make some more shots; some handheld with a 300. I rushed when i shouldn't have. I was fearing the clouds (rightfully so) as they rolled in fast after the moon went totally red. So instead of having 2 or 3 solid, good images, i have stuff that I'm not super happy with.





200mm handheld as seen through the lights of the Christmas Tree.



So where does this leave me astrophotography wise? For photographing the moon, I think a telescope with a camera adapter might be the way to go. 800mm just isn't good enough. As for trying to photograph some neighboring planets? That might be the "point & shoot through the eyepiece" method. I'm not sure, I don't have the budget of NASA. I think I'll still go with all the star trail photos.



The moon before eclipse surrounded by branches.