Lunar Eclipse 2010....

This past Tuesday, in the wee hours of the morning, something happened that hasn’t occurred in the last 400 or so years.  It was a lunar eclipse during the winter solstice!  Lunar eclipses are common enough but to have it line up such that it’s on the longest night of the year is quite the rarity.   Unfortunately I was working that night so I wasn’t able to capture as true a time sequence of the different phases; however I was able to get a few snaps in ever so often. 

I don’t do much sky/star photography so the settings are relatively foreign to me.  For the most part, I find myself just experimenting with settings, typically switching between long exposures and large apertures to short exposures and small apertures.  Working with a dark sky and a very bright moon proved challenging but I found that a quick shutter was my friend for this evening.  Given I was in a commercial area I also had to deal with buildings getting in the way as the moon moved across the sky, I found myself moving myself and tripod to a different location each time I ventured outside to take a shot or few.   As the moon moved into the peak of its eclipse and was a nice shade of red/orange, I generally stuck with longer exposures and medium aperture values hovering around 5.6.  Throughout the evening, I’d find myself manually focusing only because I found that to be an efficient way of getting the moon in focus.  It’s during times like these where I’d have a lens with a bit more reach. My equipment only allows me to go as far as 105 on a full frame, which isn’t very much when wanting to shoot something such as the moon, so the level of detail on the surface of the moon is definitely lacking. Something along the lines of a 200+ would’ve been excellent. I suppose it’s during these times I miss a crop frame body, however, I was able to make the most of it. 

Like I had mentioned before I was working that night so I wasn’t able to capture all phases but I was able to capture a few and I’ve compiled a set of images into one composite showing the phases that I witnessed.  I’ll let your imagination do the rest.

I’ve taken the above shots from several images I took throughout the night which will be displayed below.