I know, I know, it has been a while ...
It has been several months since I've posted. The weather this winter has been horrible. Hopefully, things seem to be improving here in March. Fingers crossed!
The night of Thursday March 13th into the early morning of Friday March 14th (Pi Day) was a total lunar Eclipse visible in the Americas. Fortunately (and surprisingly too) it was clear. Unfortunately, it was also a work night, and I didn't want to ask for the day off. I decided to put together a simple setup and just try to capture the total portion of the eclipse. When I got home from work Thursday, I set up my Explore Scientific ED80 Triplet Refractor on a fixed tripod with a large pan and tilt mount. I connected my canon t6i Ha modified DSLR to the scope and set everything outside (batteries were inside in the warmth of the house). I set my alarm for 2:30 AM and went to sleep after finishing a work meeting with colleagues from another country. My alarm went off, I got dressed and went outside. Moved my setup to the drive so I wasn't shooting over the house. Found the Moon, got focus, and took about 20 or 30 shots at various settings. The skies were really clear and the Moon, now completely in the Earth's umbra, was noticeably reddish in color, much more so than the last lunar Eclipse I was able to witness back in May of 2022. Feeling confident I captured "good enough" photos, I brought everything inside and tried to get back to sleep (no easy task after being in the cold crisp air for a little over a half an hour).
This is the result. I brought the photo into PixInsight and did do some BlurXTerminator to tighten up the stars and Noise Reduction. I had to keep exposure times short since I wasn't tracking. Taking longer exposures would have brought out more stars, and I could have made a nice composite. However, since I wasn't tracking, the stars would have been elongated. Overall, I'm satisfied. I would have been great to capture the whole eclipse using my imaging setup, but that wasn't possible for me this time.
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| March 14, 2025, Lunar Eclipse from Eden, NY |
