Sunday, March 4, 2007

Lunar Eclipse

OK, forgive the broken links of a couple of days ago. I wanted to get something posted quick, and always planned to come back and do a proper job. We had a lunar eclipse last weekend. The Moon was full, totality was between 10.45pm and 11.45pm, and for once the skies stayed clear. It wasn't even that cold. It doesn't get much better than that. I stepped outside with the Nikon D40, a 300mm manual focus lens, and the world's worst tripod. I got some nice, sharp pictures at high shutter speed, but as the light from the Moon dimmed I had to use longer and longer exposures - at which point, a thumping heavy lens without a tripod collar on top of Jessop's finest £20 tripod was *never* in any danger of producing good images. Ah well. I clearly need a better tripod and some more lenses. Obviously. During the longer exposures I was getting a few dots on the screen. I had written them off as some sort of stuck pixel fault with the camera - they were in the same position vis a vis the Moon in each shot. Then I noticed they were in DIFFERENT positions on the actual image. Hmm, not a camera problem then. Turns out that the one nearest the moon is actually Saturn. Neat, huh? Oh, and I've just realised that I've missed tonight's episode of Life On Mars :(

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't see the images you downloaded. :-(

Anonymous said...

Uploaded, even.
What a techno-muppet I am. *Rolls eyes.*

RDewsbery said...

Fixed that for you (my posted images, I mean. Obviously your techno-muppetry is beyond fixing).

Anonymous said...

Wow, what cool photos!

Although I feel I ought to point out that you've posted them all upside-down. ;-)

For photographic evidence, visit our blog and type 'moon' in the search box at the top of the page.

RDewsbery said...

You had me going, for a moment there.

I thought "did I rotate the pics by accident?"

Then I realised that you live in "the land of people standing on their heads", now, so your comment makes sense.