LUNAR ECLIPSE
August 2007
15 photos
August 2007
15 photos
On the 28th of August, 2007, I got up bright and early... No... make that dark and early, like 2:30 in the morning. I wanted to photograph the Lunar Eclipse which started at 2:51 am. There were a lot of small clouds in the sky and they occasionally covered the moon. I was lucky to have a few moments now and then to get some photos. This wasn't a fast event, it took 3 hours and 33 minutes, so there were openings now and then before the moon changed very much, except towards the end. When the moon was recovering from the eclipse there were a lot more clouds and they were bigger, darker and didn't give me an opening as often.
You may notice that the part of the moon passing through the earth's shadow is reddish in color. It's called the Umbra and it is red because a little light from the sun is bent/refracted through the earth's atmosphere where the blue and green light waves are absorbed by the air, which leaves orange and red light. Notice also that as the moon recovered it didn't return to the original silver color as it was before the eclipse, it was approaching morning with the sky getting lighter and the moon was now low in the west. The sunlight reflecting off the denser air molecules near the horizon caused the moon to appear tinted with brownish green. I suspect that much of that is the air pollution we have to breath.
15 photos
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These photos were taken with my Canon EOS 20D, 8.2 Megapixel SLR Camera using my Canon EF 100-400mm IS Telephoto zoom lens. Due to the cropping factor of my camera's sensor (1.6x), the actual focal length is equivalent to 640mm. The lighter photos were taken at ISO 100 with fixed shutter speed set at 1/400th of a second. As the moon darkened I had to adjust the ISO upwards until reaching 3200 and the shutter speed slower, down to 1/30 of a second.
These photos are set to lower resolution and compressed 10:1 for faster loading. You are welcome to look at or download any of the photos. If you use them on any other webpage, please give credit and refer back to me.
These photos are set to lower resolution and compressed 10:1 for faster loading. You are welcome to look at or download any of the photos. If you use them on any other webpage, please give credit and refer back to me.