Finally, Sunday's lunar eclipse photos!
Jan. 25th, 2019 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneI wanted the subject to say
At last,the 1948 showSunday's lunar eclipse photos!, but you can't embed HTML in post subjects. *sigh*
Things learned:
- 3 fused vertebrae in my neck makes high elevation photography a literal pain!
- Important - while phone is connected to the network, check camera time settings!
- I should try an experiment with the next full moon to see if the spot meter mode on my camera will yield accurate moon exposures. Don't know if that'll help with the next lunar eclipse, and thinking about it, it probably won't, but it might give me a better baseline exposure that I can compensate from more accurately.
- PACK THE FIRK-DING-BLAST RIGHT ANGLE VIEWFINDER ADAPTER! (see first item in list)
- Tracking telescope mount would be so marvelous to have! Canon has software that lets you control their DSLRs from a laptop via a USB cable. I think, but I'm not certain, that they give you an API set that you can write software to control the exposure. This might be handy in an eclipse setting.
I believe we're GMT -6, maybe -7. Can't remember. I was pleased that my SL1 clock was only 3 minutes slow, my 6D and Lumix were both spot-on for their clock setting. The weather worked in our favor: the temperature was slightly above freezing, but the really nice nice bit was that the wind was from the north and we were on the entrance patio on the south side - no icy blast! I didn't wear gloves at all and though my hands were decidedly cold, I had no problems working my cameras.
Almost all of these images, and unless otherwise noted, were taken with my SL1 with a 75-300 zoom at 300mm. Because the SL1 uses an APS-C sensor that is smaller than a 35mm negative's 24x36mm frame size, it causes a 1.6x focal length multiplier, making that 300mm effectively a 480mm telephoto, or for all practical purposes, a 500mm. Using Photoshop's ruler tool, if I'm using it right, the moon is taking about 655 pixels width - that's not a lot of resolution! But it's all the pixels that I've got until I get a lot more money to drop $2k on a lens and $4k or so on a body.
That ain't happenin' soon.
With most of these photos, they're not zoomed. I cropped them to a square format to center the moon, but otherwise this is 100% the frame size. I always shoot RAW + JPEG, so every exposure gives me two files: the raw sensor take plus a JPEG, where the camera does some optimizations and compresses the files. In my normal shooting, I always use the raw file and do some manipulations in Photoshop and usually get a better image than the JPEG. I've been doing some work on these images now and then since the eclipse on the raw files and I just haven't been happy with the results, then tonight I had an idea: why don't I take a look at the JPEGs! They've already been optimized by the camera, and honestly, the camera does a perfectly adequate job for posting online, so maybe they're good enough.
And by gosh and by golly, they mostly are!
So here's my eclipse photos from Sunday night!
One more thing about the SL1. It's one of Canon's earlier Eos cameras with a touch-screen LCD back, and it had a feature that I had forgotten about that proved very useful. If you use it in preview mode, it locked the mirror up and turns the LCD display into a live viewfinder. Fairly normal feature. But if you tap on your subject where you want it to focus, it focuses. OK, that's cool. Tap the subject a second time: it takes a photo! Proved very handy when shooting from a tripod and having trouble squatting down to look through a viewfinder!
I've embedded the timestamp and exposure in the lower right corner of each photo. As the aperture number increases, less light goes through the lens. Likewise, as the shutter speed increases, less light. As the ISO number increases, the sensitivity of the camera increases, so it needs to go up as the eclipse fullness increases and the moon becomes darker.
This first photo is early on in the eclipse, which ran from 20:36MST to 02:48.
The rest of the photos are under this cut, and as usual, clicken to embiggen.
This is pretty much totality.
Now, this one is the only one in the set that I played with the levels and curves a bit. If you look a little bit to the upper right of the center of the moon, you'll see a green line. That is the APOLLO laser hitting the moon! At that point the beam is about 2 kilometers wide. I'm not sure which target it's hitting, I'm pretty sure it's not the Russian Lunokod rovers as I believe those are towards the top of the moon, I think it's Apollo 11's reflector.
The laser was cycling through all five retroreflectors throughout the night (three from Apollo landings, two Russian rovers), but it wasn't on 100% of the time.
This is the only one I'm including taken with my Lumix, just to demonstrate the difference in image size. Again, I cropped it to square but didn't change the magnification. If you'll notice the timestamp, it's actually during totality! I think it would've been a lot sharper if I'd mounted it on a tripod, but I didn't.
So that's it. I shot a lot more, but I don't feel like bothering with processing more images. I'm not satisfied with the sharpness, but they're still kinda cool. If you'd like to know more about the APOLLO lunar laser ranging program, I have a video on my YouTube channel that explains a lot. And I found a pretty cool web site with lots of information on lunar and solar eclipses including what is upcoming and where it can be seen at, all times in UTC.
And finally, some iPhone apps, which may or may not be available for Android, which may be of interest to those of an astronomical interest. Lunar Watch is very good for finding out when the moon will be rising and setting, including past and future dates, and maps it for your location. SunriseSunset likewise for that big yellowish thing in the sky that is the bane of daywalkers. SkyView Lite is an awesome program that uses your phone's camera plus GPS plus accelerometers and will identify objects in the sky when you point your phone up! Very spiffy. Planets likewise uses the phone's accelerometers to give you a 3D map of the sky's constellations and planets, also spiffy.
At last,
Things learned:
- 3 fused vertebrae in my neck makes high elevation photography a literal pain!
- Important - while phone is connected to the network, check camera time settings!
- I should try an experiment with the next full moon to see if the spot meter mode on my camera will yield accurate moon exposures. Don't know if that'll help with the next lunar eclipse, and thinking about it, it probably won't, but it might give me a better baseline exposure that I can compensate from more accurately.
- PACK THE FIRK-DING-BLAST RIGHT ANGLE VIEWFINDER ADAPTER! (see first item in list)
- Tracking telescope mount would be so marvelous to have! Canon has software that lets you control their DSLRs from a laptop via a USB cable. I think, but I'm not certain, that they give you an API set that you can write software to control the exposure. This might be handy in an eclipse setting.
I believe we're GMT -6, maybe -7. Can't remember. I was pleased that my SL1 clock was only 3 minutes slow, my 6D and Lumix were both spot-on for their clock setting. The weather worked in our favor: the temperature was slightly above freezing, but the really nice nice bit was that the wind was from the north and we were on the entrance patio on the south side - no icy blast! I didn't wear gloves at all and though my hands were decidedly cold, I had no problems working my cameras.
Almost all of these images, and unless otherwise noted, were taken with my SL1 with a 75-300 zoom at 300mm. Because the SL1 uses an APS-C sensor that is smaller than a 35mm negative's 24x36mm frame size, it causes a 1.6x focal length multiplier, making that 300mm effectively a 480mm telephoto, or for all practical purposes, a 500mm. Using Photoshop's ruler tool, if I'm using it right, the moon is taking about 655 pixels width - that's not a lot of resolution! But it's all the pixels that I've got until I get a lot more money to drop $2k on a lens and $4k or so on a body.
That ain't happenin' soon.
With most of these photos, they're not zoomed. I cropped them to a square format to center the moon, but otherwise this is 100% the frame size. I always shoot RAW + JPEG, so every exposure gives me two files: the raw sensor take plus a JPEG, where the camera does some optimizations and compresses the files. In my normal shooting, I always use the raw file and do some manipulations in Photoshop and usually get a better image than the JPEG. I've been doing some work on these images now and then since the eclipse on the raw files and I just haven't been happy with the results, then tonight I had an idea: why don't I take a look at the JPEGs! They've already been optimized by the camera, and honestly, the camera does a perfectly adequate job for posting online, so maybe they're good enough.
And by gosh and by golly, they mostly are!
So here's my eclipse photos from Sunday night!
One more thing about the SL1. It's one of Canon's earlier Eos cameras with a touch-screen LCD back, and it had a feature that I had forgotten about that proved very useful. If you use it in preview mode, it locked the mirror up and turns the LCD display into a live viewfinder. Fairly normal feature. But if you tap on your subject where you want it to focus, it focuses. OK, that's cool. Tap the subject a second time: it takes a photo! Proved very handy when shooting from a tripod and having trouble squatting down to look through a viewfinder!
I've embedded the timestamp and exposure in the lower right corner of each photo. As the aperture number increases, less light goes through the lens. Likewise, as the shutter speed increases, less light. As the ISO number increases, the sensitivity of the camera increases, so it needs to go up as the eclipse fullness increases and the moon becomes darker.
This first photo is early on in the eclipse, which ran from 20:36MST to 02:48.
The rest of the photos are under this cut, and as usual, clicken to embiggen.
This is pretty much totality.
Now, this one is the only one in the set that I played with the levels and curves a bit. If you look a little bit to the upper right of the center of the moon, you'll see a green line. That is the APOLLO laser hitting the moon! At that point the beam is about 2 kilometers wide. I'm not sure which target it's hitting, I'm pretty sure it's not the Russian Lunokod rovers as I believe those are towards the top of the moon, I think it's Apollo 11's reflector.
The laser was cycling through all five retroreflectors throughout the night (three from Apollo landings, two Russian rovers), but it wasn't on 100% of the time.
This is the only one I'm including taken with my Lumix, just to demonstrate the difference in image size. Again, I cropped it to square but didn't change the magnification. If you'll notice the timestamp, it's actually during totality! I think it would've been a lot sharper if I'd mounted it on a tripod, but I didn't.
So that's it. I shot a lot more, but I don't feel like bothering with processing more images. I'm not satisfied with the sharpness, but they're still kinda cool. If you'd like to know more about the APOLLO lunar laser ranging program, I have a video on my YouTube channel that explains a lot. And I found a pretty cool web site with lots of information on lunar and solar eclipses including what is upcoming and where it can be seen at, all times in UTC.
And finally, some iPhone apps, which may or may not be available for Android, which may be of interest to those of an astronomical interest. Lunar Watch is very good for finding out when the moon will be rising and setting, including past and future dates, and maps it for your location. SunriseSunset likewise for that big yellowish thing in the sky that is the bane of daywalkers. SkyView Lite is an awesome program that uses your phone's camera plus GPS plus accelerometers and will identify objects in the sky when you point your phone up! Very spiffy. Planets likewise uses the phone's accelerometers to give you a 3D map of the sky's constellations and planets, also spiffy.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 10:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 04:44 pm (UTC)As I recall, the laser goes through a frequency multiplier stage to make it visible to the human eye. It's visible coming out of the optical bed mounted on the telescope, but at certain stages inside the bed it's invisible and capable of burning you, so if work is being performed inside the cabinet, you have to be VERY conscious of where the optical path is and what you're doing! Once it's out of the telescope, the laser is 3.5 meters wide (the telescope diameter), it's too diffuse to damage skin. Theoretically you should still be using eye protection, but when we were standing on the catwalk looking for aircraft while the laser was shining, you couldn't afford the light loss while trying to spot aircraft against the night sky. Now, that job is automated with an IR camera to detect engine heat and a directional radio detector to detect the transponder.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-27 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-27 06:45 am (UTC)(By the way of introductions,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
seasonoftowers is my new DW friend from Romania, a photographer, gamer, hiker, and astronomer. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quasar273 is my wife and formerly a member of the Q Continuum who lost her powers and now runs the 3.5 meter telescope that I have been known to occasionally talk about - both her and the telescope. In revenge for being kicked out of the Q Continuum she blasts the moon with a laser, and she has a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics and is also a gamer or I probably wouldn't have married her.)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-28 06:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 04:28 pm (UTC)You're welcome!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-29 02:35 am (UTC)