Total Lunar Eclipse

Tonight was a total lunar eclipse here in the northern hemisphere. We started out with clouds but then the sky opened up just in time for the start of totality.
I snapped a ton of blurry pics with my little canon elph and out of those I got some decent shots and a couple of good ones even through my binoculars. These are the best ones.

Lunar Eclipse Far with Renton in the foreground This one is approximately a 2.5 second time exposure. Slightly overexposed the moon but you can just make out the two neighboring bodies. Maybe BopOp or Jerry can identify them? I sharpened this image a little bit.

Lunar Eclipse Far with neighboring objects This is a camera zoom (3X). I screened this one over at 50% to make the stars (bodies? I think the bottom one might be Saturn) pop a little more. You can clearly see the darker side of the shadow on the left side of the moon. This is full totality.

Lunar Eclipse near through binoculars This image is taken through my binoculars, full totality, with full camera zoom. I had my binoculars set on the deck railing, propped on my cell phone. My little 3.2MP Canon was attached to my Joby Gorillapod tripod which was in turn latched onto BopOps tripod leg at just the right height to point it through the binoculars. I think there is some chromatic aberration going on here (the red halo along the bottom of the moon) either from the binocs, the camera, or both. Also note, the moon looks oblong but I checked it for round in my graphics editor and it is an optical illusion. In fact, lets see if I can’t clean that up a bit.

Lunar Eclipse near through binoculars, cleaned aberration full black Aha! I simply erased the chromatic aberration from the edge and re-filled the background with all-black (no noise). Not too shabby for a 3.2MP hack-job, through smudgy binoculars, and a nice editing tool.


Update: Two testimonials, one visual and the other via Skymap, confirm the “body” to the lower left was indeed Saturn. Blief-it-or-not.

One thought on “Total Lunar Eclipse”

  1. Those are fantastic pictures, Lief! Amazing what a little camera can do [with the able assistance of one skilled in PhotoShop!].

    The best part of the evening for Grumpy, though, was getting to see and hear the Great GrandMermaids. And it was also the best part for the Grand Mother who enslaved them to make some pudding for everyone to share after they came in from the cold.

    Like

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