Lunar Eclipse

The following blog was written this morning at 3:30am….

There’s a lunar eclipse tonight (or early Tuesday morning). The eclipse started at 1:21am and reached totality at 2:51am. I set up my camera to take some pictures. It took me a million tries to get a setting that will take a decent picture of the moon. I still don’t know how they turn out but I can see the shape of the moon on the camera LCD quite vividly. I used ISO 100 and 1/8 second shutter speed. Camera is supported with a tripod. No flash obviously. And pictures are taken with a 2 second timer to leverage off small movements when the button is pressed. At first I looked up some night photography tips and tricks to better setup the camera. However that turned out to be somewhat unhelpful because I’m not trying to capture the lights of a night view. If I used a slower shutter speed, the picture will capture more light which will just end up having a blur around the moon. I’m still not too sure about how the ISO value affect the picture. It’s just through trial and error that I settled with 100. I also tested with the white balance and exposure settings to have a more natural looking moon. (Some white balance setting gave a green looking moon. =S ) The lunar eclipse is now (3:37) at the totality phase and is giving off a reddish shadow of the moon. Now I can wait until 4:22 to see the moon come back… or sleep.

This is the first time I’ve seen an eclipse (aside from the car haha). Hmm… it wasn’t as exciting as I expected. It was a fairly slow process, taking an hour and a half to completely ‘disappear’. Since I’m just looking out a window, the sight of the moon is quite small. I guess being indoors also takes away some dramatic effects of the eclipse. It’s a unique experience nonetheless. Now I want to see a solar eclipse which, in my mind, seems more exciting than a lunar one. Next total solar eclipse visible in Canada is on August 1, 2008. I wonder what I’ll be doing then.

P.S. I choose sleep because stupid trees blocked the view of the eclipse leaving totality.

Photos here! 

Posted in Real Life
Tagged as lunar eclipse