As I mentioned in my previous post, I am new to Astrophotography, especially using a telescope (as I’ve never had one!).
So for Christmas I got this beast and a big learning curve. (taken with iPhone at dusk) A Skywatcher Explorer 200p with goto EQ5 mount.
I knew before Christmas I was getting it, I also knew that there was a lunar eclipse not long after Christmas and the last total eclipse for 10 years! So no pressure to get a photo of it then!
We hadn’t had many clear nights before the eclipse. so I really unsure as to what I would get, whether I would see it or indeed even I could view all of it from the background as the moon was going to be towards the house at that time.
I’d set a couple of alarms for that night. The total eclipse was between 04:41 & 05:43, but it all started at 02:36. All day I’d been checking the sky, cloudy, clear patches, cloudy…, 8pm clear, I grabbed some test shots and the moon showing full incase it was cloudy when it started. When I went to bed at 11, cloudy, 2:00am cloudy!
3:15am however, clearing with hazy, I could see the moon, but with haze. Ok, go for it!
I had the telescope outside by 3:30 and and ready to shoot just before 4am. I’d missed the start but not the main event.
The first photos before total eclipse were looking good, I used the same settings as my test shots. However the moon in the sky was red, my photos just showed the shadow. Also, as totality got closer, my images were just darker due to less light from the moon. I hadn’t really expected this, or thought about it.
Decreasing the shutter speed allowed more red to show, but of course introduced the potential camera shake on the telescope or of course motion blur from the moon moving.
I pushed the shutter time a but more, up to a 1 second exposure.
But in the end I increased the ISO to keep the blur chances to a minimum.
And this was it, a Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse!
now it was just a matter of making sure I had enough in focus images. The Totality lasted for an hour, so there was plenty of time to take lots of photos.
Plus a quick warm up and drink, then with the cloud still staying clear I was able to continue with shooting the moon from that stage back to partial. About 06:20, a big solid cloud bank came over, but at least I had been able to shoot to the same amount of moon crescent as what I started from.
In the end I was really lucky with cloud cover and the temperate and managed to shoot for 2.5 hours. It was a great experience and I was please with the results which were an improvement on my last attempt.
Next on my list to shoot now is the Orion Nebula and close up images of the moon.