2019 Super Blood Moon Tonight (early 21st January)

[Øivind Tøien]

Øivind,
I'm planning to have the camera on the tracker, as the eclipse gets closer to totality the moons gets very dim, I'm not sure it's going to work but I'll try
In my neck of the woods total eclipse is closer to 11pm, also it is 70° degrees up in the sky, as much as I would like to include some foreground - say a building or a tree - the building or tree would look very big in relation to the moon

Yes, I will definitely recommend using the tracker, Armando. The Skytracker works well for this purpose even without a specific lunar speed setting. During the lunar eclipse January last year I was able to expose at 10s f/6.3 ISO 100 on the tracker. Otherwise exposures would have to be kept at a fraction of a second and ISO pushed up. There is another thing I will try if it clears up: Last year exposure time with my AW1 was limited to less than one second exposure. However I have learned that by taping the contacts to the FT-1 adapter one can expose up to 30s in manual mode. I always thought one would get a "lens not attached message, but this is not the case in manual mode.

[armando_m]

Thanks Øivind, all the paraphernalia is setup, waiting for the show to start

Thanks for the tip on the ft-1

[pluton]

High clouds here, might get worse. As of about 40 minutes before 1st contact:

[Jack Dahlgren]

Raining heavily but intermittently here. Caught a glimpse ...

[armando_m]

13 sec f8 iso 200

[Jack Dahlgren]

nice Armando. Wish I could replicate results here, but cloud cover is too dense.

[MFloyd]

Excellent Armando 

My setup:


PhotoPills application - eclipse page


quite cloudy


Nikon D850
Nikkor 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8E FL
ƒ/5.6  400.0 mm 1.6s  ISO 3200

I need definitely a good tripod 🤨

[Bill De Jager]

Really nice, Armando! 

I had the gear set up but tonight we had cold rain - 8 degrees C.  The situation looked hopeless.  Just after I put the equipment away and just as totality was ending, of course the moon came out.  So all I have is an image in my mind from looking through binoculars.

[John Geerts]

Great shot, Armando

4:42   the start of the eclips...

Df  35-200/3.5-4.5 Ai-S

[MFloyd]

Comparing Armando's and my picture, it's interesting to note the difference in illumination (left versus right) comparing Mexico and Switzerland; the more vertical inclination of the star trails, for Mexico, indicates that Mexico is closer to the equator than Switzerland .... 😊

[Lorne]

Comparing Armando's and my picture, it's interesting to note the difference in illumination (left versus right) comparing Mexico and Switzerland; the more vertical inclination of the star trails, for Mexico, indicates that Mexico is closer to the equator than Switzerland .... 😊

I believe that your image is rotated 180° hence the apparent difference in lighting. But both your photos are very good.

[MFloyd]

I believe that your image is rotated 180° hence the apparent difference in lighting. But both your photos are very good.

Off course ! Thanks ! I don't believe it's mine, but I will double check 

[Lorne]

Here is my best result from tonight's eclipse. I was surprised that this iso6400 was better than any of the lower iso shots. Probably in part the result of a less than stable tripod. But I confess that getting focus nailed was difficult - even live view.

Df + 80-200/2.8D ½ sec @ 5.6

[Bent Hjarbo]

13 sec f8 iso 200

Nice

[Øivind Tøien]

Exellent results Armando and Lorne!
Just back and downloaded cards after being out from 6PM to 11PM. Below is how it started, and did not become a lot better; I will get back with some edits once I have gone through them all. The moon was not visible by eye through most of the total phase. Thanks to the camera and tracker I could see it, as I had the tracker set up so that by limiting myself to 300mm focal length, I could follow the moon throughout without re-aiming. (By sheer luck a hole opened up in clouds straight above when I was setting up so that I could just see enough of Polaris to polar align.) As the tracker tracks the stars and moon lags slightly behind, the moon will move slowly from right to left. I had it all planned to combine/stack a selection of these exposures, but contrast was far to poor for that. This was at 6:30 PM so the part eaten out of the moon is because of clouds, not shade of earth. However I do not complain as temperature was at a balmy -19°C by Alaska standards.