Well, the eclipse caught me a bit by surprise, so I didn't have any really good telescopic setups for filming it. I just set up my camcorder and snapped some video quickly. The view through my surplus binoculars was much more spectacular. It was kind of cloudy, but when the moon was eclipsed (a beautiful dark red color that is totally absent on the video) the stars came out and made for a beautiful sight in spite of the clouds.
Here are my 10x80 surplus binoculars. They have no coatings, which
means the images aren't as bright as they could be, but they have lots
of eye relief, and a steady oak tripod which makes them a pleasure to
use for dark sky objects. Eventually I'd love to get them coated and
perhaps replace the eyepieces with some modern coated ones.
Some video during the dark of the eclipse. None of the red color is evident.
The moon is coming out of the total eclipse now. Through the
binoculars you saw a beautiful sight, with the creamy orange red of the
moon and the bright white almost diamond ring like effect of the
southern most tip of the moon emerging into bright sunlight. The video
does not even begin to do it justice.
The frame on your right is the average of 4 aligned frames, with a bit
of contast stretching. Fairly simple image processing, but it makes
the maria a bit more obvious.
A bit later. You could probably figure out the relative diameter of
the moon, and therefore its distance from these photos by calculating
the diameter of the shadow cone at that point. Perhaps I'll do that
for fun.
The same view, but with the camera set to daylight, rather than dark
mode. The exposure only reveals the brightest parts of the moon which
were overexposed before.
Overall, it was a neat event, and while I was unprepared for it for the
most part, we had a great time. Perhaps we will be in better shape for the
upcoming one in the summer.
Click here for the best picture of the lunar eclipse I've seen so far. Nice shooting!
All materials on this website are Copyright 2001, Mark T. VandeWettering. Permission is granted to reproduce and distribute these files for non-profit, personal use.
Mark T. VandeWettering <markv@telescopemaking.org>
