The February 20, 2008 Lunar Eclipse

It had been almost four years since the last lunar eclipse being visible from NH. There was one in 2007 but it had been clouded out. I was looking forward to trying some better imaging techniques. As the date approached it looked like we might be clouded out again but on eclipse day, the weather was pretty clear. Unfortunately, it was not very warm and we had a lot of snowfall this winter. I spent the better part of the evening before shoveling a path to the observatory door and clearing all the snow and ice off the roof. I also spent a good amount of time cleaning my reflector's 8-inch mirror and aligning it. By the time I got home from work on the next night, I was ready.

The eclipse did not start until 8-9 PM, so I had plenty of time to setup equipment and get things ready. The biggest problem I had was trying to mount the video camera afocally to my 120MM F5 refractor. This never really worked out and my focus was off during the eclipse making that a washout. Despite this, I had two digital SLRs imaging the eclipse vice one for the 2004 event. I recently had acquired a Pentax K110D. So I mounted the Pentax on my 8" F5 reflector and the Nikon D70 to the 10" SCT @F6.3. I originally hoped to mount the D70 and the telecompressor to the scope but I had difficulty removing the Crayford focuser I had installed 8 months ago. As a result, the images of the moon were not 100% full disc images like in 2004. Still they were pretty close and quite clear. I also resorted to using the old "hat trick" method in taking images with the meade SCT. Images from the last eclipse demonstrated camera shutter shake in long exposures. Therefore, during totality, I used a 10-second shutter speed but obstructed the scopes front except for about 1-3 seconds during that time. As a result, I obtained some 1-3 second exposures that did not exhibit vibration when closely examined. At least that was one lesson I had learned from 2004.

The following images were ones I took during the eclipse. The results were pretty good and worth sharing.

This was taken early on just before the moon contacted the umbra. There is a lot of penumbral shading visible.

The moon began to disappear as it moved into the earth's shadow.

Longer exposures during the partial phase revealed the orange tint of the moon. This is due to sunlight being refracted by the earth's atmosphere. Because there had been no major volcanic eruptions to throw dust up into the earth's atmosphere, it was going to be a bright orange eclipse.

As totality approached, the colors of the earth's shadown on the moon began to look a very bright yellowish-orange.

Totality as seen in this 0.7 second exposure taken through my 8" F5 and Pentax K110D set at ISO 800

This six-second exposure reveals the surrounding the starfield.

Here I took a 2 second exposure of the moon and surrounding star field with a 200mm F2.8 telephoto lens.

Meanwhile, my Nikon D70 took this one second exposure of the moon through the Meade 10" SCT.

I switched the Nikon with the Pentax on the 8" prior to the end of totality. I think the Nikon did just a bit better on the imaging.

Having to go to work the next day, I decided to end my eclipse photography before the end of the eclipse partial phase. It was also quite cold and standing out in the snow in 20 degree temperatures wasn't getting to be much fun.

The eclipse was a great event and there won't be another until 2010. This also will be visible during the winter months. Hopefully, I will work out the kinks with recording it on video soon.

Go back to Tim Printy's Astronomy page