January 20th was already very cold to start with and the night promised to be even colder. Bitter is the word that came to mind. With temperatures hitting minus 25 with a projected wind chill of -35 degrees Celsius, it would be only the most unique of circumstances to get someone outside! And what a unique evening it proved to be! It was the night of a lunar eclipse and a super moon eclipse to boot!

The moon rose at sunset, big and bright. The super moon, soon to become the super blood moon, was indeed bigger then normal. I had read that it was both bigger and brighter in the sky than any other of the year owing to the point in the orbit the moon was at during this eclipse. It was at perigee.

I began by taking pictures of the moon simply as it was long before the eclipse was to begin. It is a good thing I did, as I quickly relized that I did not have a clue how to take a picture of such a bright object with its high contrast to the sky around it. Thanks to the internet I was able to figure out the manual settings for the f-stop and aperature opening to allow for pictures of the full moon both now and later during the eclipse.

The result was my first image: the full moon prior to the beginning of the eclipse, (once I had learned to take pictures of it!). I do not offer any pictures of my failed first attempts as they were simply blobs of yellow and white in a field of black.

I did not stay out for long after this first successful picture was taken as it is was becoming exceptionally cold, and I had to take my gloves off to operate the infrared shutter release. I retreated indoors and warmed beside a roaring fire, a hot cup of tea in hand.

After warming up, and waiting for the beginning of the movement of the moon’s limb into the penumbra of the earth’s shadow, I went back out and snapped a progression of shots. Little by little the earth’s shadow began to bite into the moon’s bright face.

About half way, I retreated once again. The wind has begun to pick up and it was truly exceptionally bitter.

I ventured out one last time to take a few more pictures just prior to totality. The moon was just a sliver of silver.

This was the final shot for the evening. The winds had picked up quite alot and tripod was moving a little too much to get good images, particularly of totality when the moon went blood red. I did try to take to take image of the total eclipse but could not get the bulb feature to work well enough to secure a good image. It was too cold (did I mention that?).  I counted the evening as a success however, given I could take good moon shots!

Categories: Astronomy, Natural History, Science