Red moon

[BenBotha]

Lunar eclipse in South Africa with a red moon.

Canon 7D
Canon 500 IS + 1.4
F 5.6
1/4 sec
ISO 1000

[Roger Clark]

Ben,

Nice image. The 1/4 second exposure is a little long. The plate scale of your image is 1.3 arc-seconds/pixel (206265 arc-seconds per radian * 0.0043 mm the pixel size / 700 mm focal length). The Earth's rotation is 15 arc-seconds per time second, so you image is smeared almost 3 pixels. A shutter speed 3 times faster would reduce the smear. Of course if you were on a tracking mount --- never mind. Wish I could see it. It is cloudy here.

Roger

[BenBotha]

I really appreciate the comments, especially from Roger Clark!! The S/s was 1250/s with the full moon and gradually dropped as the eclipse progressed. The change from full moon to the red moon took one hour.

[Dave Mills]

Roger beat me to the punch on this. My thoughts mirror his exactly

[Brendan Dozier]

Cool looking shot, Ben. They mentioned on the news that the volcano in Chile helped to give it the reddish color.

[Roger Clark]

Cool looking shot, Ben. They mentioned on the news that the volcano in Chile helped to give it the reddish color.

Brendan,
Probably so, perhaps even redder, but the eclipsed Moon is almost always red due to dust and other aerosols in the atmosphere (the same reasons why sunsets and sunrises are red).

Roger

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Ben,
I think Rogers suggestion for a faster SS is a good one although at ISO 1000 already....not sure you wanted to push the 7D further. The color makes this a bit more special IMO!