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Lunar Eclipse, Winter Solstice 2010

Godfrey

Well-known member
Here's a little video composite showing the last 15-20 minutes or so of the lunar eclipse last night from my patio:

http://gallery.me.com/godders#100204

(In testing with different browsers, FireFox played it immediately. Safari had to have its caches cleared, quit and restart, then it played it properly.)

The photographs were made with the Olympus E-5 fitted with EC14 1.4x teleconverter and adapted Pentax SMC Takumar 135mm f/3.5 lens (a net 190mm f/4.9 telephoto). The only processing done to the individual images was to crop them to a small square and roughly center the moon, then they were input into iMovie and output as an MPEG file with about a 30 second duration.

During the course of taking the photos, I manipulated ISO setting, EV compensation and focus as the clouds above swirled in and out, trying to keep a viable image capture going.
 

Winkel

New member
Interesting exercise, Godfrey. I was under the cover of clouds (and snow) during this event so I appreciate your efforts. Looks like the clouds posed a bit of a challenge for you as well.

Any particular reason why you used the 135mm & EC14? Probably the obvious answer is it gave you the greatest reach. ;)

Initially I was thinking a camera secured to an equatorial mounted tripod could track the moon with greater accuracy but I suspect this (tracking) cannot be done with objects orbiting within our solar system... Time to pull out the old astronomy textbook.

Jim
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
Interesting exercise, Godfrey. I was under the cover of clouds (and snow) during this event so I appreciate your efforts. Looks like the clouds posed a bit of a challenge for you as well.

Any particular reason why you used the 135mm & EC14? Probably the obvious answer is it gave you the greatest reach. ;)

Initially I was thinking a camera secured to an equatorial mounted tripod could track the moon with greater accuracy but I suspect this (tracking) cannot be done with objects orbiting within our solar system... Time to pull out the old astronomy textbook.
Thanks! Yeah, it was worrisome with the clouds ...

Oh, an equatorial mount and the right program driving it will track the moon well (the moon is in an equatorial orbit), but I don't own one. Similarly, the 135 + EC14 is the longest lens I own.

Shooting the moon is all about image size at infinity ... 190mm nets a 420 pixel diameter to the moon on a FourThirds 12Mpixel sensor. If I had a 400mm, it would be ~840 pixels.
 

f6cvalkyrie

Well-known member
Thanks, Godfrey !
I was all set up and ready with my G1 and Meade 1000mm Mirror lens, but the clouds made it impossible to see/shoot anything :thumbdown:
C U,
Rafael
 

ggibson

Well-known member
I was able to catch a similar timeframe near the end of the full eclipse (around 1am PST). It was overcast in the Bay Area all day, but cleared up a bit that night. I used my 45-200mm, but I had a bit of an issue with zoom creep (aiming nearly straight up) so my results came out slightly soft.



 
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