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Own, it was delightfully quiet actually

Here are some more pics of the eclipse. I parked out in Sandton in a good spot where I could photograph the eclipse with the RMB building in the foreground. While the results are more or less what I had planned for, I'd have to be honest that it didn't work as well as I had imagined - mostly due to the poor quality lens I had and it's inability to resolve any real detail on the moon. At any rate, I'm still happy with what I got so here goes:

This picture is a composite of 25 pictures taken between 18:40 and 21:40 at 10 min intervals. During the umbral eclipse I sped it up to 5 min intervals.
Here are some more pics of the eclipse. I parked out in Sandton in a good spot where I could photograph the eclipse with the RMB building in the foreground. While the results are more or less what I had planned for, I'd have to be honest that it didn't work as well as I had imagined. At any rate, I'm still happy with what I got so here goes:

This picture is a composite of 25 pictures taken between 18:40 and 21:40 at 10 min intervals. During the umbral eclipse I sped it up to 5 min intervals.


Here is a zoomed in portion of the image that shows the time from 20:20 (start of umbral eclipse) to 21:40 (20 minutes into total eclipse).


A picture of the half eclipsed moon taken at 23:30.


And a picture of the total eclipse taken at 22:20, just a few minutes past theoretical maximum eclipse. Notice how the stars immediately surrounding the moon are visible. These will, under normal circumstances, be completely drowned by the bright light of the moon.

great deefstes!!!

Moggiedog and Deefstes!



Deefstes, that's one amazing sequence of events. Your calculations were obviously Einstein-perfect out.



Thanks for sharing, you two.

Deefstes, great sequence!

I'm going through my shots now, will post soon.

Deefstes, I have to compliment you as I think that that sequential arc of moon pics, with the building in the foreground, is fantastic! Did you leave the shutter open and expose by alternately removing and covering the lens with the cap? The black-and-white close-up is also tops. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks mate. No, I had the camera on a tripod and used a remote shutter release to take a picture every ten minutes without the camera moving. I then basically just combined all the images afterwards.

I think it could be an interesting idea to leave the shutter open for the 2.5 hours and just cover/uncover the lens for every exposure. I think I'll give that a try some time. In a way it is more "purist" as it would not require much or any post processing.

And the "black and white" picture is actually not black and white. It's just that the sky was black and the moon was white

For those interested, have a look at this unbelievable picture of the lunar eclipse. It is also a combination of several pictures taken during totality, eight in fact, each of them a 40 seconds exposure. There is not a great deal of information available on how the image was taken but I would assume the camera must have been on a equatorial mount to allow tracking of the moon so as to avoid motion blur.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110617.html

I thought that's how you did it, Deefstes, because, after using some kop after my question, I realised that too long and exposure would have made the building overwhelming in brightness, with accompanying loss of detail.

Thanks for the link: fantastic pic indeed. I agree with you - they must have used an equatorial mount.

Here are two more sensational shots. The first one was taken of this same eclipse but from Hungary. The photographer had a similar idea than me but clearly a better lens and also a better vantage point. His being on a much higher latitude means that the moon didn't climb as high in the sky making it possible for him to get the full eclipse fairly close to a foreground building.
http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3003294

The second one was taken of the March 4, 2007 eclipse from Iran. This guy left the lens open for the entire umbral and total stage of the eclipse. This resulted in a sort of star trail (in fact, you can see some star trails on the picture as well). Notice how the trail starts bright (full moon), fades to red (eclipsed moon), and then brightens again (full moon). Of course, this would have been far more difficult with the recent eclipse as it was a very long eclipse and would have required a shutter opening of something like 2.5 hours.
http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/photos.asp?ID=3003268

Despite the first photographer having a better lens, I prefer your composition, Deefstes.
The second pic is a bit weird.