It's late in the evening on Dec. 20, the last of the four total lunar eclipse's in 2010, fell on the same day as the winter solstice, a rare cosmic event that hasn't occurred in centuries was about to start. The shadow of the earth is expected to pass between the sun and the moon, dramatically changing the color of the moon -- from bright orange to blood red to dark brown and perhaps gray. This eclipse will be visible across all of North America. Unfortunately the weather here in the San Francisco Bay Area this evening was not optimal for viewing any thing in the sky except for clouds...
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| High overcast blocking the a clear view of the moon. 22:18 |
I really wanted to see and photograph this eclipse, but with the weather being what it was, I really did not have my heart in if it was going to be a night sitting out in the cold watching the clouds floating by blocking any chance of seeing the eclipse.
It's a round 9pm, 45º and there are a few light showers. It did not look promising with a lot of hight clouds with a few breaks of semi-clear skies floating passed. I decided to gear up for the shoot but I opted to do it from my driveway rather than heading to the Oakland hills for a darker location. It was going to be easier to setup and break down if the weather was not going to cooperate. Also I could plug-in a heater. :) Sitting out in the cold for 3-4 hours was not something I was looking forward too.
I had done this setup before, where I shot tethered to my MacBook Pro via USB to a Canon 5DMKII with a 400 ƒ 2.8 with TWO 2x tele-converters stack on each other, effectively pushing the focal length out to 1600mm. The 400mm was attached to a Wimberley head, stabilized with a K-8 Kenyon gyro. All atop a Gitzo Carbon tripod heavily weighted with two 12 lbs. shot bags. This gave me the ability to keep the tripod down to a lower more stable hight. I also use of Live View option in the camera which helped in the stability locking the mirror up, eliminated the vibration from the mirror slap. This also made it easier to focus and track the moon since I was using conventional photographic equipment.
While setting up, I noticed that the flight patterns for commercial airlines to SFO had been re-routed over my house. While glancing up to the full moon prior to the lunar eclipse. I saw an airliner fly passed the moon. I've been looking for that shot where a plane passes across the moon, so along with gearing up for the eclipse. I had another 5DMKII with a 70-200mm, ƒ2.8 at the ready as more planes passed over head, hoping it would align with the moon for that shot. Many flew by but only one was close.
It was just off the mark and I thought, not this time. Planes were just not lining up wit the moon! But after looking at the take on the computer, I noticed a very interesting thing about the shot. With the plane flying low just above the clouds, the moon cast a large shadow from the plane to the top of the over cast skies creating a double ghost image. There is a faint but sharp outline of the plane and then the larger soft shadow seen from below. This was a promising sign for the night in being able to make images of the eclipse.
As the night went on, the eclipse started with only partial views of it popping through the cloud cover every once and awhile. Fortunately I was blessed to enough clearing during the lead-in to the eclipse. Yielding three images at the start with a full view, 1/8, half and then the faint view of the total eclipse. Contently manually tracking the moon was the most difficult part of the shoot. Not having an equatorial mount to track the moon, I needed to maintain a high shutter speed as the moon tracked across the sky. It was during the total eclipse I removed one of the tele-converters to increase the aperture to maintain the high shutter speed. At the peek of the eclipse the fastest I was able to achieve was 1/5 of a sec. @ ƒ5.6, 800 ASA, at 800mm, giving the last image I shot just a bit of softness due to movement. After I made the total eclipse image, the cloud cover thick-end, ending the nights celestial viewing. Below is my four image sequence of the 2010 Lunar Eclipse. Enjoy the magic.
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| Full moon @ 22:14:53 pst |
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| Start of the lunar eclipse 22:34:24 pst |
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| Lunar eclipse @ 23:10:45 pst |
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| Total lunar eclipse at 23:46:52 pst |
