A mess of eclipse shots

[Ben the Ignorant]

Yesterday evening the weather was announced as no good, so I looked at the South from my window twenty minutes before it started, and indeed some opaque-looking and continuous clouds were blanketing ten degrees of sky above the horizon. So I started preparing a late evening snack and gave up on observing it. But thanks to the inquiring mind we all have, I interrupted my meal and checked the place where the Moon was supposed to rise.

Good thing I didn't blindly follow what the weather forecast said, the clouds had just thinned down, and the Moon, very dark and orangey, was rising as an Apple logo with a missing part, mostly hidden behind a tree and a communication tower, but recognizable enough that I changed my plans for the evening. Or rather, I forgot about them; after the photoshoot was over I realized the half-eaten meal was still on the table, cheese, salad, breadcrumbs and all, which made me a little irritated at myself for leaving it to evening bugs, and for being so forgetful.

What I do remember is quickly unpacking my NexYZ adapter, spending almost no time settling for the Explore 24/68 eyepiece because it maximizes the brightness, being one of my lowest power eyepieces that can take the adapter. Last january's eclipse was big on the screen thanks to the Celestron 5's focal length but the exit pupil was small so the shot were darkish. This time I took no chances, went for a large and bright exit pupil, 24mm eyepiece on a 560mm semi-apo refractor.

To improve the chances or getting a few decent shots the parameters were changed often, 5 megapixels, 3.9, 3.7, 3.1 and 2 megapixels, which explains the various image scales. exposure adjustment of -2, -1.5, -1, -0.5, 0, +0.5, +1, +1.5, +2. Only the ISO setting was not changed, 400 all the way, but that might have been a mistake, some bright Moon edges were overexposed, and the darker orange region was not revealed anyway.

A big wall forced me to stop before the Moon climbed above the nasty foggy lower air so this series is incomplete. But if some imagers want to try to stack and process some of these, maybe a good picture or two can come out.

The flares are surely not from the objective, too few surfaces and the coatings are to dim, so they are from the eyepiece and/or the phone's optics. I suppose they would go away through stacking if someone wants to try.

The diffusing clouds looked much, much prettier in the binoculars, with so many more fine lines in them, like wood stripes, but that was lost in the phone's non-stellar quality. All in all a busy and not wasteful half-hour interruption of my meal.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Ben the Ignorant

[MilwaukeeLion]

Nice of you to feed the bugs.  Some good captures, iso 100 may have tamed that bit.

[xtreemchaos]

great shots , what I do is turn the setting to AV then on the lcd put the rectangle on the bright bit and the surface shows. charl.

[MarsG76]

Great shots... I agree that the view in binoculars is much nicer... I thought exactly that when looking at the total lunar eclipse last year through the binoculars and trying to photograph it.