lunar eclipse

Lunar Eclipse (and more)

 in Blog  tagged Facebook / FLT-132 / iOptron pier / lunar eclipse / motorhome / QHY268M / Twitter

No, this isn’t the eclipse that happened this morning, but one from many years ago.  It was mostly cloudy here last night, although I could see the Moon through some thin clouds before I went to bed around midnight.  I hope you got to see it! I intended to post about it here yesterday, and thought I did, but must have done something wrong.  It’s been such a long time since I posted here that I may have forgotten how to do it.  Part of the reason I haven’t posted is that I’ve been busy with non-astronomy things.  But also, […]

The Music Series

 in Blog  tagged AbL / Flat calibration / flat light / lunar eclipse

In my last post I explained what flat calibration is and what is required to make it work. In this post I will introduce my solution to the problem, “Ab Light”: The name (in case it isn’t obvious) is a small pun based on my interest in music. “Ab” is read as “A flat”, and this is ‘a flat light’. Ab Light (abbreviated AbL) is based on LED technology, with a light pipe made of a special type of acrylic that is designed to provide even illumination when lit from the edges. I used the same material for the illumination […]

There’s My Eclipse!

 in Blog  tagged clouds / lunar eclipse / wind

We did not get completely skunked!  Despite the forecast for heavy clouds, peaking around the time of eclipse totality, I went out to the desert and got set up before dark.  It was very cloudy then, and a bit windy.  As it was getting dark I got some interesting shots of the pre-eclipse Moon (thinking that this might be ALL that I would get): I had set up at the same spot as the earlier picture of dinosaur sculptures, thinking that I might be able to use them as foreground to some lunar eclipse photos, but it worked pretty well […]

A Glowing Heart

 in Blog  tagged amp glow / ASI1600 / Heart Nebula / lunar eclipse

The sky has been mostly clear the last couple of nights, but with the Moon nearly full it’s not possible to shoot anything in “normal” RGB, and no reason to go out to a darker location, since the Moon is producing far more light pollution than anything around here.  So I set up to do narrowband imaging from the patio behind our apartment.  The Heart Nebula is a great target, and fits beautifully in the field of view of the WO Star71 telescope and ASI1600 camera.  The above image is just the Hydrogen-alpha (H-a) band, as I haven’t yet captured […]

Where’s My Lunar Eclipse?

 in Blog  tagged lunar eclipse / moon

  There will be a Total Lunar Eclipse this coming Sunday night, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the weather will cooperate and give us a good view of the dark, red Moon.  For people in the Portland, OR area there is probably not much hope, as the forecast (unsurprisingly) calls for heavy cloud cover all week.  That’s why we’re down here in southern California!  The forecast here, however, is quite annoying, calling for fairly clear skies for at least 2 days either side of it, but not so good at the actual time of the eclipse! On the […]

What’s Wrong with a Super Blue Blood Moon?

 in Blog  tagged blood moon / blue moon / lunar eclipse / Super Moon

It was cloudy here on the morning of Jan. 31st, so we didn’t get to see the lunar eclipse – or photograph it.  Fortunately, my friend Mike McKeag was in southern California and managed to get this great shot of the Moon with background stars. I did get a lot of questions about this much-hyped event, so thought I’d summarize the answers here: A “Super Moon” just means that the Moon is near the time in its orbit where it is closest to Earth (at perigee), so it appears bigger and brighter. Since no one pays much attention to it […]