Joni Mitchell warned us: Clouds get in the way:
A clouded view for openers
A long eclipse — more than an hour of almost-total coverage of the Moon’s disk. Clouds came and went, with a few good viewing times. With the naked eye, the view was spectacular. Through the 200 mm Pentax zoom, not quite as spectacular, even with the tripod mount. Photographing eclipses takes some skill that I don’t yet possess.
Clouds took a break
Eclipse totality
Eclipse nearing its end
Near the end of totality, where the shadow slips away from the full Moon, a bright white light provides a dazzlying view that confounds the light meters.
Celestial orange, tinged in silver
Step back, see a few of the starts, even from inside Dallas city limits
To every Earth shadow, there's a silver lining to confuse the built-in light meter
Blood-tinge gone, Earth's shadow retreats (all photos by Ed Darrell)
Eclipse nearly over, clouds again fog the view
Longer lens, better tripod next time. (Heh. We should live so long.)
George, if that was handheld, that’s fantastic.
Tripods are made for cold nights — and other occasions when human hands just can’t stay steady enough.
Better than what I got – we had total cloud coverage. But there was one in ’08 with perfect viewing conditions and… these are still better than what I got. Why do Lunar eclipses take place when I’m shivering violently?
I got a couple of okay shots posted on my blog.
http://mickeymills.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/the-blood-red-moon-of-2010/