Moonstruck

The west coast was treated to an eclipse of the moon this morning. When I went to bed last night there were a lot of clouds in the sky. I was afraid that the clouds would get denser and completely cover up the show. But I woke up at 4:00 and looked outside and there were a few clouds and the moon was casting nice shadows.

The show was on!

Being lazy, I just set the camera up to make a little movie of the eclipse in the back yard. We don't have a good view of the horizon so the moon was going to go behind trees before the moon was fully eclipsed, but that's OK. I didn't know what I'd end up with anyway. I needed to set the camera to take in a fairly wide view so the moon's image was going to be rather small. I was just hoping that this would record the dimming of the moon and the darkening of the sky.

And, with any luck, the dancing of the clouds.

There were clouds in the sky when I set things up but they mostly disappeared before the eclipse started. I was hoping the clouds would stay (but thin enough to always see the moon) so there would be more movement in the video.

I took some test shots and settled on five-second exposures at f/4.8 with the ISO set at 200. The focal length of the lens was 32mm. I took the pictures from 4:08 until 6:51. The frames are played at a rate of 24fps.

The moon is between the horns of Taurus. You can see the Hayades below the moon at the beginning. The sky gets a bit blacker as the eclipse progresses. Just before the moon goes behind the trees you can finally see that part of the moon is getting dimmed. Then it's dawn.

I'm pretty pleased with this one. I recommend watching it in HD and in full screen.



Here's an image from the movie just before the moon goes behind the trees.