Okay I did not see my usual ration of television on Saturday evening. Nor did I consume my usual amount of alcohol. No, I was out in the cold with a couple of thousand dollars of camera equipment pointing skyward in order to catch the lunar eclipse. Not the first lunar eclipse I have witnessed, but a very good one 'seeing' wise.
I have also been lucky enough to see a total solar eclipse (France, 1999) - an altogether more frantic affair especially if you are attempting to photo-document it. If you are lucky enough to catch a solar eclipse take a tip - either do not be the photographer or take a moment, mid-totality, to lift your eye from the viewfinder and look around - to see the sky dark above you, but light toward the horizons - see the blackness of the hole in the middle of the sun's disc like a polo mint (or lifesaver) in the sky. Witness the confused behavior of birds and other animals. Sometimes photographers can become too detached - don't get so obsessed with recording that you were there that you actually might as well not have been.
But back to Saturday's eclipse. It was decidedly more leasurely than France. Totality lasted over an hour - the image you see here is the mean of a 'stack' of four successive images taken just after the start of totality.
The moon moves quite fast, especially in the viewfinder of a camera attached to a 1m Maksutov Cassegrain. I lack the fancy electronics to track the moon automatically, and the reduction of light during totality and hence slow shutter speed, mean the actual image of the moon cannot be as sharp as the Mak could manage. A series of relatively short images means the moon does not get too smeared - however the higher sensivity required (ISO Equivalent 320 - uncooled Nikon DSLR) means noticeable noise. Averaging the images together goes someway to reducing this noise and bringing out both lunar surface features and the incredible colours easily visible to the naked eye.
So here it is - for those of unfortunate enough to live the wrong side of the world (this time) or who needed their beauty sleep. Enjoy.
