As mentioned in my last post, I used my Nikon D750 DSLR mounted on a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer tracker to capture about 5 hours of the partial lunar eclipse. Here is a preliminary time lapse video.
This sequence is just from the shots exposed for the sunlight face of the moon. I'm working on another sequence with full lunar surface, blending shots exposed for sunlight and shadow. The blended shots will showcase the redness of the lunar surface at mid-eclipse. They will also include the Pleiades and a tighter crop.
The movement of the moon in this sequence is not due to its movement across the sky but the moon drifting out of center-frame due to the polar alignment of tracker being a little bit off. I'm still working on a process to re-align the sequence and to rotate the view for a more natural orientation of the sky.
When watching the video, be patient as there are a few seconds in the middle where it goes black. The shots used in this video were taken at f/6.3, 2500th of a second, ISO 800. It turns out that was slightly underexposed for a sunlit lunar surface during the phase where the Moon was mostly eclipsed, I missed capturing the portion of its surface still reflecting sunlight so nothing shows up.
More to come...
BTW, for a better view, select full screen (box icon, lower right) when playing the video.
In the early morning hours of November 19, 2021, a lunar eclipse began. As a partial eclipse, it normally might not have been noteworthy. What brought a lot of media attention about this one is that it lasted just a shade over 6 hours. It's been 1000 years since the last time a lunar eclipse lasted that long.
The timing for this eclipse is such that the Moon was almost at apogee, the point where it is furthest from the Earth in its orbit, and since a body in orbit moves slower the further it is from the body it orbits, the Moon spent more time in Earth's shadow. It also meant that the Moon was smaller in appearance so this was the opposite of a "Super Moon".
The other interesting thing about this lunar eclipse is that the Moon is within a few degrees of the collection of stars known as the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters. As both were high in the sky during most of the eclipse, the cold dry air we had in North Texas that night made for great viewing.
Initially, my plan to capture the eclipse was to shoot with my Nikon D750 using the longest lens I have and the Star Adventurer sky tracker to capture shots of the lunar face throughout the night to create a timelapse video. However, given the close proximity of the Pleiades, I decided to shoot with a shorter lens and include it in the view.
I won't go into the technical details but given this was really the first time I had used the Star Adventurer for tracking more than a few minutes, I shot a bit wider view than I probably needed to so the Moon is rather small in the frame. The bad news is that the tracker was a little off and so the Moon didn't stay centered in the frame. The good news is that with the wider view, both it and the Seven Sisters were in-frame throughout the 5 hours of the eclipse I captured.
Here is a frame from about mid-eclipse. I'll post more as I get further through post-processing all the images.
While the Internet and both digital and print media made a big to-do over the recent lunar eclipse, the January 2019 Super Blood Wolf Moon, I was actually a little disappointed in this one. Yes, it was big. Yes, it was red. Yes, it was, well, a Wolf Moon (the name used for a January full Moon for centuries, according to the Farmer's Almanac). But there's a problem... it was almost straight overhead.
Why would that matter? If your primary interest is being able to see the entire eclipse, start to finish, then there's no surer bet than a night like Sunday night. A great example is the wonderful composite by a fellow Texas Astronomical Society member, Jason Ware (you can see the original post for this on Facebook here).
Jason Ware Jan 2019
Another of my favorite shots from this latest eclipse was from a Canadian astrophotographer, Alan Dyer (below and here). Similar to Jason's shot above, I like how both are a composite that show the key points in the sequence.
Alan Dyer Jan 2019
However, for me the Moon is often more interesting seeing it juxtaposed against something earthly, whether man-made or natural. Here are a few examples from past lunar eclipses I've shot.
This first shot below was taken in September 2015, the day before my wife's birthday, while we were in the Northwest visiting friends who live in Vancouver, WA. Shot just east of Portland, that's a very bald Mt Hood below the Moon (snowfall had been pretty sparse that year). The eclipse was already in progress as the Moon rose that night so it was in totality by the time it was just above the mountain. What an incredible view!
Nathan Eaton Sept 2015
Of course, sometimes a lunar eclipse occurring when the Moon is close to the horizon is not a blessing. For example, the shot below was taken of the January 2018 Super Blood Blue Moon setting over downtown Dallas. It occurred during morning twilight so the sky brightened well before the eclipse was over and before the Moon had set, making it difficult to really get the full effect of the total eclipse.
Nathan Eaton Jan 2018
On the other hand, sometimes what you see in an image is not necessarily what it looked like in person. Whether you realized it or not, I bet you have seen a widely shared, simply amazing view of the Moon above a city skyline or similarly distinctive foreground, one where the Moon just jumps out at you! Often times, this is really a combination of two great shots, one of the foreground and one of the Moon but where the Moon had been altered by enlarging it and possibly moving it to strategically position it in relation to the foreground. I think many of these are really stunning and a joy to see. What bothers me is when it isn't made crystal clear that the photographer has taken poetic license, that it isn't a realistic portrayal of the Moon. Thanks to the Moon Illusion, we are used to to the idea that the Moon looks larger close to the horizon so it is not surprising that many people assume a shot where the Moon looks larger than normal is real.
A variation of this is composites similar to the ones above but where they are over a foreground subject. I am a big fan of these but, again, when the Moon is shown "larger than life" relative to the foreground, I think the photographer needs to call out the exaggeration. A great example of this done well, both the photograph and the photographer being upfront about what changed, is this shot by Jason Weingart that was highlighted in PetaPixel.
Jason Weingart Jan 2019
As another example of why it's important to be clear about when a shot has been materially changed, consider this post of a "larger than life" shot of the moon by Beau Rolfe on Facebook. In Beau's very cool shots, taken of the December 2018 full Moon, the lunar orb really is this big, but it's because it was shot with a really long lens (600mm), not because he edited the image in software to make the Moon look larger or shot the Moon with a longer lens than the foreground was shot with. Regardless, his shots still raised questions of "where can I go to see it that large?" and "was this Photoshopped?" (questions friends of mine brought these shots to my attention to ask about).
When you have a lunar eclipse like this month where the Moon is high in the sky, the focus (at least for photography) turns more to the Moon itself rather than the Moon and a foreground landscape. Here are examples of that, one from April 2014 when we were at the Perot museum into the middle of the night for an eclipse party and also a similar one at height of the latest eclipse, taken Sunday night from our backyard. Both were shot through our 10" Dobsonian telescope, captured with camera on my phone pointed through the eyepiece. Not ideal (see the lens flare in first one and the "field of view" in second) but I think they are still interesting shots.
Nathan Eaton April 2014
Nathan Eaton Jan 2019
As fun as it is to see all the different ways in which people shoot an eclipse, I also like the other ways in which people celebrate the eclipse. For example, I didn't make it there but one of our favorite watering holes, The Flying Saucer, had a unique way of celebrating, offering "Moon related" adult beverages.
One of the other fascinating aspects of this eclipse is the historic first sighting of a meteor strike during the eclipse. A key contributing factor to discovery of this event was that scientists were actually looking for it. It would have been pretty incredible to have been watching through my telescope just as the strike occurred!
To close, I'm including a couple of shots I took from the backyard Sunday night. First, a shot taken with my Nikon D750 using the longest lens I had handy, a 120mm Nikkor (actually, the D750 kit lens, a 24-120mm zoom). Image is cropped from an HDR stack of three bracketed shots.
Nathan Eaton Jan 2019
Finally, here is is a shot of the evening with us huddled around the fire pit trying to stay warm while watching the eclipse with our 8 month old Weimaraner, Luna. Not only is her given name take from the Moon, but her AKC registered name, suggested by our granddaughter Kai, is based on such an event: Runner's Lunar Eclipse. Seemed fitting to have her out with us while we were watching such a beautiful sight. I hope you were able to catch a glimpse of it, too!
[Originally published on Sept 29th; updated with version of photo published on Flickr]
Having invested a lot of time and energy to prepare for and take this shot of Mount Hood from Jonsrud View Point in Sandy, Oregon, I looked forward to checking out all the interesting shots other people were posting. However, two days later I am troubled by what I'm seeing online. While Photoshop and similar tools are valuable aids in fine-tuning photographs for display, it's easy to bend an image to something that could only have existed in the imagination of the photographer. In some cases, the changes are slight - the image is only slightly different than reality, reflecting a difference in tone, crop, etc. - but in other cases things are morphed beyond the realm of reality. In full disclosure, I used Photoshop on my tablet to retouch this image and remove a spot that resulted from a dust spec on the sensor of my camera. Note that I haven't yet had time to do other edits, ones only possible once I am home and have access to my PC again such as reducing the noise (edits intended to make the image look more realistic, not less). At a later date, I'll post the edited version. Other photographers though have not only "cleaned up" their photographs, but they have gone to extreme lengths to transform the images captured in their cameras. In some cases, the moon is shown much larger than it actually was. In other cases, it's positioned differently - it's either lower in the sky, shown in different settings, etc. What they have all done is portray the moon in an very unrealistic manner. Many would say "that's just a case of poetic license... what's the problem with that?". I don't have an issue with poetic license - it's something I've exercised many times myself. What I do have an issue with though is presenting something of scientific interest, a natural astronomical event, in a way that may be difficult for someone who didn't personally observe the event and may not be familiar enough with similar natural phenomena to discern that what they are seeing is not what they would have seen standing out under the sky last Sunday night. Note that I'm not talking about the sequence shots that show multiple instances of the moon in a single image (assuming they are proportionately sized and positioned). Those actually tell a useful story of the progression of the event and most people would understand that the image is a composite of multiple shots. To their credit, the photographers for most of the sequence images I've seen, even the ones who materially modify the position and size of the moon in such shots, point out that the image is a composite. I am not arguing against these images. In fact, I applaud the creativity of the people who produced them - there are several that I'd love to have as the wallpaper on my PC or perhaps even as a print hanging on my wall. For me, what's missing though is transparency about what the image represents, a factual explanation of how it differs from nature. While some people would skim right past a disclaimer that explains the moon image was enlarged to make a more interesting shot, at least all who view such a thing would have the opportunity to understand what they see isn't realistic and why. Reaction of friends and family when I raised this issue was "good point, but who's going to pay any attention". They may be right but I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy so I'm posting this anyway, hoping that at least a few people pay attention. I'm also a big believer in civil discourse and not a fan of flaming so rather than post comments directly on the images I'm talking about, I'd rather explain the concern here where I'll then share it via social media. If it makes a few people looking at images from Sunday night's lunar eclipse (or other similar natural phenomena) pause and consider whether a given image is realistic or not, great. If this comes to the attention of the photographers responsible for such images, even better. If any of them take the point to heart and update captions to clarify what they changed, fantastic. If you agree or, more importantly, disagree with me on this, feel free to say so in the comments.
The journey continues beyond 2009... check it out!
