Lunar Eclipse

Been a while since I've posted here. With an active three year old there's barely enough time to go out and take scenic photos, let alone sit at a computer and write about them. Today is no different but I thought I could throw up some photos from this morning's lunar eclipse while Abby is eating lunch. Already I've had to stop typing twice just this far in because of her calls.

The eclipse didn't start until around 11pm last night. I set up two cameras in the backyard, a Nikon D800E with a 200-400mm+1.4 teleconverter and a Pentax Q10 fitted to my Canon 400mm/2.8IS lens.

I had bought the Pentax a week earlier when it was a special sale on EBay. It's an interchangeable lens camera with a very small sensor. So when fitted to a lens made for a regular camera the small sensor acts like a 5.5x crop, giving my 400mm the equivalent field of view of a 2232mm lens on a regular camera.

It was a little cloudy as the eclipse started giving the moon a soft glow around it and blurring the details.

But by the time totality was reached the skies were mostly clear.

Miranda relaxed in the hammock while I fiddled with the tripods tracking the moon. With the Q10 the moon pretty much filled up the whole picture. It would also move completely thru the frame in a couple minutes. On the Nikon my field of view wasn't as tight, allowing more stars to get into the shot with the moon being so dark.

Originally I'd just planned on shooting the moon by itself since it was so high in the sky. But with over an hour of full eclipse available I figured I'd try getting something else into the shot. I headed for the Amtrak station. The distortion of the wide angle needed to get both the building and moon together kinda ruins the shot.

Mars is the bright spot to the upper right of the moon. I tried another with the flag pole and lights but still didn't like this view.

I got home just when the moon started moving out of the Earth's shadow. One last shot before bed.