August 28 2007 - Total Lunar Eclipse photos and animation

These are my latest astronomy shots. They were taken with my 80mm Celestron refractor and a canon digital Rebel XT DSLR. The weather conditions were less then perfect with very hazy skies that looked almost overcast at times! Luckily during totality the skies seemed to clear a bit even though the haziness still remained! I did not have much hope for these images but was pleasantly surprised that something came out when i processed them. Click on images to see larger versions!

11 x 4 sec exp @ ISO-1600

11 x 6 sec exp @ ISO-800

17 x 3 sec exp @ ISO-1600

All Three top photos are the same but with different processing etc. 17 x 3 sec exp @ ISO-1600

Lunar Eclipse animation: Well this is not a full animation as I had hoped and as you can see by the end of the animation I got clouded out so I couldn't finish it. Originally this animation was to go from totality to the end of the eclipse to illustrate the motion of the earths shadow across the surface of the moon but compiling the animation is proving to be a painstaking and very time consuming task. Perhaps in the future when I have a lot of time I will make it and add it on. But for now below is a very quick animation I did. This animation is composed of a series of 135 images taken 30 seconds apart. Each image was taken with my 80 mm refractor and my canon Digital Rebel XT DSLR. Each image is 1/20 second exposure @ ISO-200. Click on animation to see larger size. Keep in mind it is a pretty big file and may take a minute or more to fully load. Once it fully loads you can see the animation in its correct speed.