Way OT: Lunar Eclipse *LINK*

Re: Way OT:  Lunar Eclipse

GaryG in MD

Nice shot, Brad.

Unfortunately, it was cloudy in the DC area. Shame to waste a good one like this. ...GG

Re: Way OT:  Lunar Eclipse

Dennis in Southern Oregon

Great shot Brad, I wish I could have seen it. After a summer of 99% clear nights, we had local fog last evening.

Dennis

Re: Way OT:  Lunar Eclipse

ebd

Beautiful picture!!! THanks.

Re: Way OT:  Lunar Eclipse

John K Jordan

Excellent, thanks for posting! Great quality even with posting degrade.

For viewing the moon do you use an aperture reducer? I made one of cardboard for my 8" scope. It seems the changing moon brightness would need an adjustable aperture, maybe some kind of sliding cardboard leaves?

I use a good metal coated objective solar filter for the sun. I wonder if someone makes such a thing for looking at the moon.

I like this picture too that I saw on facebook, on the public Weather Snapshot-Mr Twister group, five hours on a Dallas rooftop:

Re: Way OT:  Lunar Eclipse

Brad Vietje

Hi John,

I wanted to create a multiple exposure time lapse like you posted, but I don't have a DSLR/telephoto, which would be best for that.

I have used aperture masks for bright stuff, like a 6" off-axis mask over a 16" for the Moon & bright planets, but I have not done anything like this with the remote/robotic scope I use at our local observatory. I was operating the telescope from home, and the observatory is 18 miles away (www.nkaf.org).

I usually have to shoot through our densest filter -- H-alpha -- and make a 0.03 sec exposure with the 17" mirror, sometimes up to 0.1 sec for thin crescent phases. I should try using an off-axis mask sometime when I'm there at the observatory, since there's a certain amount of vignetting that comes from really short exposures with this camera (iris style shutter).

The thing is really optimized for deep-sky use and research like photometry & spectroscopy, so even if not ideal for lunar & planetary work, just having access to such a nice toy is really nice for a telescope geek like me. I have a few home-made 8" scopes at home (and one on loan to a college student), so I can play around at home if I bit the bullet (or wallet) and bought a decent camera. I'll attach a Moon shot through a 110 mm refractor, made from home with about 30 seconds of video. Amazing what you can do with an inexpensive little camera and Registax...

Clear skies,

Brad Vietje

Newbury, VT

telescopes and cameras

John K Jordan

>...with the remote/robotic scope I use at our local observatory. I was operating

>the telescope from home, and the observatory is 18 miles away (www.nkaf.org).

Ah, that explains the 17" scope! I missed the remote reference and was wondering who in blazes has a 17" scope! I knew a few people who had home-built and store-bought 12" scopes but 17"?!

The moon closeup is amazing! I read about image combining software decades ago but didn't know you could get it now, and for free. I guess you heard about the guy who photographed inside the space shuttle bay from the ground and had the military all freaked out.

I have an old 8" schmidt cassegrain with motor drive. I know what you mean about the D/SLR. I used to make more photos with my piggybacked Nikon F body and lens than I ever did through the scope.

I liked shooting comets, got Halley both before and after perihelion from TN and Florida Keys (had lost all its visible tail by then). I did a double exposure of Halley from two shots taken one day apart to show how much it moved and they put it on the front page of the paper here! (my astronomical claim to fame)

Below is marginal shot of Hale_Bopp, Nikon, 35mm TriX film, scanned from a print (you can see the stray fiber in the upper right!) Good clean fun!

Re: telescopes and cameras

Brad Vietje

Yup -- Planewave makes some of the best small observatory telescopes. Here's the OTA:

And here's a photo looking down the throat of the one I use on a custom mount (with temp counter-weight -- photo by John Blackwell). We never look through this instrument; it's set up as a giant camera -- essentially a 2936mm f/6.8 telephoto:

Nice toys, eh?

Now I need to get back to wood turning before Ellis sends me a nastygram

Safe spinning,

Brad Vietje

Newbury, VT

Re: Way OT:  Lunar Eclipse

Mike Brazeau

You were lucky to have clear skies. We went to our cottage on Lake Erie hoping to see the moon rise over the lake, which is awesome alone without an eclipse. We're a bit late and it had just risen and was partially smothered in cloud. Got one shot at about 1/3 coverage and luckily saw this stage for a few moments.

No nastygrams here

Ellis Walentine

I'm always fascinated to hear folks like you and John K cover territory I didn't even know existed. It's a great "look around," no pun intended.

I did manage to take a sequence of the lunar eclipse on December 20, 2010, but I'll be darned if I can find the composite image. Good fun for dabblers like me, but you guys are way outta my league. Great work.

Ellis

Re: Way OT:  Lunar Eclipse

Bill Boehme

I didn't photograph this latest one, but I made the poster shown below five years ago for the science teachers where my wife was teaching before she retired.

WAY Nice, Bill -- that's beautiful !