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Diane Miller
04-04-2015, 05:45 PM
This was at 5 am this morning, and only lasted for 5 minutes. Shooting it was a bit of work. Some thin clouds were forecast here and it wasn't hard to talk my husband into making a run in the plane to Independence, CA (between Bishop and Lone Pine), where it was severe clear. The tiny airport there (matching the tiny town) looked like a good place to throw sleeping bags under the plane without being harassed, and it proved to be so.

Canon 7D2, 600mm II + 1.4X III, ISO 800, f/5.6, composite of 5 exposures from 1/15 sec to 2 sec. Tracked with an Astrotrac, which must be near its capacity with that rig but in a couple of tries now has done a good job of tracking with it. Not much done except exporting the minimally-adjusted exposures out of LR5 into PS for compositing by hand, a slight High Pass filter and a modest Curve punch.

Cropped to 60% of original frame.

The moon was barely grazed enough by the earth's shadow to qualify as a total eclipse, hence the much brighter upper edge. The upcoming eclipse in September will be deeper in the shadow and will be best in the eastern half of the country. It will also be at a more civilized hour, just a few hours after sunset on the east coast, but only an hour or so after on the west coast.

Dave Hudspeth
04-04-2015, 06:56 PM
One word.........Awesome!

Grady Weed
04-04-2015, 07:00 PM
Ditto to the above from me here in Maine. We had clouds, rain...so....no go even if we could have seen it. TFS.

Warren Spreng
04-04-2015, 09:41 PM
Awesome shot Diane! Congrats, we didn't have enough coverage over here in OH to even bother with it!

Jerry van Dijk
04-06-2015, 02:33 AM
Very nice capture Diane. I like the bright stars that clutter around the moon.

Marc Mol
04-06-2015, 06:25 AM
Agree with the above comments, with that eclipse glow nicely captured Diane.:w3

TFS

Don Railton
04-07-2015, 04:06 AM
Good stuff Diane... Love the inclusion of the stars.. It all happened on the only night we have had cloud cover. The sky was clear for a good week or more beforehand, and I was out on the farm well away from the city light... waiting...

DON

shane shacaluga
04-07-2015, 04:37 AM
Very nice "blood moon". Good details showing and stars add to the image

TFS

Diane Miller
04-07-2015, 03:58 PM
There seems to be a Murphy's corollary that spectacular sky events are accompanied by clouds. We were lucky to be able to find a clear spot. There weren't many on the west coast, where the view was best.

Mike Hitchen
04-07-2015, 04:10 PM
A nice shot, Diane

That is pretty much what I recall seeing on Friday night when I did not even know there would be a lunar eclipse - the bit that confuses me is that this is northern England and from everything I have read it is not supposed to have been visible in UK.

Diane Miller
04-07-2015, 04:21 PM
That is strange -- the maps I saw showed it centered in mid-Pacific and only somewhat visible from the east coast of the US. on east to the Mid-East. http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2015-april-4

Did you have a major forest fire going on? :w3 Or perhaps coming from the pub....?

Andrew McLachlan
04-08-2015, 07:02 PM
Beautifully done Diane!!!

Diane Miller
04-10-2015, 11:54 AM
Thanks everyone! My next project is to try to re-shoot the exact star field now that the moon is out of the way, with proper exposure and tracking, and match and composite it. I should be able to bring out different sizes of stars and possibly a very faint galaxy that is to the lower left of the moon. That's assuming I can find the exact spot, which might be tedious.

Don Lacy
04-13-2015, 05:24 AM
sorry for the late comment but a wonderful image Diane

Morkel Erasmus
04-15-2015, 03:49 PM
Late on this one - but great work Diane! Love the dotted stars around the moon as well...

dankearl
04-15-2015, 07:44 PM
I like it, but I think the Moon is a bit soft?
No one else mentioned it, maybe my eyes.......

Diane Miller
04-15-2015, 09:38 PM
Well, there are about 50 miles of atmosphere between it and the camera.... And it was only 20 degrees above the horizon, in the direction of horrible stagnant air over the south end of the San Joaquin Valley. "Sharpening" is highly overrated in many circumstances. But this is a vast improvement over the raw files.

dankearl
04-15-2015, 10:33 PM
I forgot that even the mildest critique of anything you post or comment on offends you.
Won't happen again......