Lunar Eclipse Photos

Last night, when I went to bed, I had decided that I was too tired to try and wake up in the middle of the night to view and photograph the total lunar eclipse, which was scheduled to go total at 4:52am. I fell sound asleep, until my cat started puking on my bed at 4:25am. Coincidence? I figured, at that point, since I'd already gotten out of bed to clean up cat puke, I might as well take the tripod outside and photograph the eclipse....

Here are a few of the pictures I got. I think I figured out the source of the noise in my blacks. It has got to be the bright street lights that backlight me. There is one bright light 2 doors down from my driveway, and many others lining my street. The longer exposures were doing well to enhance the moon, but the noise in the blacks would get worse and worse. It's practically like shooting in daylight, the street lights are so close by and so bright. So, I'm figuring that is it. Unfortunately, unlike my first quarter moon shots, upping the black levels in the photos obscures part of the shadowed moon, so you'll just have to live with the noise and not zoom in too close :) I didn't crop most of these, for that reason.

My general settings were:

Camera:	Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:	0.8 sec (4/5)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	300 mm
ISO Speed:	200
Exposure Bias:	0/3 EV
Flash:	Flash did not fire

. Click any of them to see larger ones in Flickr, or view the set at Flickr.

The first 4 photos are the partial eclipse, and the last 2 are after the total eclipse:







Exactly 4:52am, the start time of the total eclipse:


4:53am