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Jan 20-21 total lunar eclipse obs and pictures


Juliancolton
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Tonight's total lunar eclipse will be the first one visible from eastern North America since September 2015, and the last until May 2022. Partial eclipse begins just after 10:30 pm in the south-southeast, with totality lasting from 11:41 to 12:43. During maximum eclipse at 12:12 am, the moon will be at azimuth 185 degrees, or nearly due south, and high in the sky.

Scattered cloudcover looks to present issues for observers, but the fast flow in the wake of our mid-latitude cyclone means periods of overcast will likely be transient, and that there should be at least periodical viewing opportunities in most or all areas. Before heading out into the subzero wind chills, I recommend consulting the GOES-16 nighttime cloud phase band; uniform salmon colors indicate clear skies, while yellow patches are low-level clouds that would block the view. https://weather.cod.edu/satrad/exper/?parms=local-Rhode_Island-ntmicro-48-1-100-1&checked=counties-map&colorbar=undefined

Report back with what you're seeing, along with any photos you may capture this evening!

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Reddish tint visible now near the limb closest to the umbra, but only at telescopic magnification so far... hard to see any color with binoculars yet.

2.7F with a biting wind... batteries for cameras and accessories are lasting about 15 minutes before quitting. I have digital and film cameras set up in different parts of the neighborhood, so hopefully something stays alive until 1:50 and gets at least one of my planned shots

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Reddish tint visible now near the limb closest to the umbra, but only at telescopic magnification so far... hard to see any color with binoculars yet.
2.7F with a biting wind... batteries for cameras and accessories are lasting about 15 minutes before quitting. I have digital and film cameras set up in different parts of the neighborhood, so hopefully something stays alive until 1:50 and gets at least one of my planned shots
Why at 1:50?

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

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Definitely darker at maximum eclipse than 2015. Didn't seem to be as vividly orange though.

While I didn't get a complete sequence or any long exposure shots this time, I had enough batteries charged up to shoot a few one-off frames that I think will turn out alright. In the meantime, I took this with my phone through the eyepiece of my telescope just after the end of totality...

Dxacza6X0AA3gMI.jpg:large

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3 minutes ago, Juliancolton said:

That's a great shot. Love how prominent the background stars are. 

Thank you. It's not very sharp but I knew I was having trouble with the focus. I took 5 bracketed shots with the hopes of using them to try and reduce the noise, but was having trouble combining them in photoshop/Lightroom. That photo was actually a blend of 2 of the 5 shots.

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52 minutes ago, dmb8021 said:

Thank you. It's not very sharp but I knew I was having trouble with the focus. I took 5 bracketed shots with the hopes of using them to try and reduce the noise, but was having trouble combining them in photoshop/Lightroom. That photo was actually a blend of 2 of the 5 shots.

Was it aligning the layers that gave you problems?

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16 minutes ago, Juliancolton said:

Was it aligning the layers that gave you problems?

I tried the merge hdr feature in Lightroom and it said it could only merge 2 of the 5 images (this is the image I posted). I also tried the HDR feature in photoshop but it didn’t align them correctly. I also tried using mean stack mode but it came out blurry. I don’t have a lot of experience with photoshop so I might have to figure out how to manually align and stack them. 

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On 1/20/2019 at 11:07 PM, Juliancolton said:

Reddish tint visible now near the limb closest to the umbra, but only at telescopic magnification so far... hard to see any color with binoculars yet.

2.7F with a biting wind... batteries for cameras and accessories are lasting about 15 minutes before quitting. I have digital and film cameras set up in different parts of the neighborhood, so hopefully something stays alive until 1:50 and gets at least one of my planned shots

Why is it that the reddish color was hard to see this time around with the naked eyes?  Usually you can see it and capture it in pictures but the moon's upper limb was unusually bright (even white) during totality?  I think it's because the moon traversed the northern part of the earth's umbra this time and did not go through the deepest part of the earth's shadow?

Also, I did not realize the moon was so high up in the sky during winter, definitely much harder to photograph than the super moon eclipse that was in September a few years ago at the same time.  The moon was near the zenith at mid eclipse this time!

My power went out just before the eclipse started lol it made it more dramatic as the moon was bright enough to make everything look a ghostly white until it got eclipsed.

 

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On 1/21/2019 at 2:00 AM, Juliancolton said:

Definitely darker at maximum eclipse than 2015. Didn't seem to be as vividly orange though.

While I didn't get a complete sequence or any long exposure shots this time, I had enough batteries charged up to shoot a few one-off frames that I think will turn out alright. In the meantime, I took this with my phone through the eyepiece of my telescope just after the end of totality...

Dxacza6X0AA3gMI.jpg:large

I actually think the Sept 2015 eclipse was much darker, but also redder.  That shiny white part at the top wasn't there in 2015.

Why was this eclipse so much higher up than that one?

 

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On 1/20/2019 at 11:07 PM, Juliancolton said:

Reddish tint visible now near the limb closest to the umbra, but only at telescopic magnification so far... hard to see any color with binoculars yet.

2.7F with a biting wind... batteries for cameras and accessories are lasting about 15 minutes before quitting. I have digital and film cameras set up in different parts of the neighborhood, so hopefully something stays alive until 1:50 and gets at least one of my planned shots

thats why you should've taken pictures from inside your warm house and through the windows haha.

 

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