The Lunar Eclipse

As most of you know, this last Saturday morning we had a total lunar eclipse. It started around 4:45 am and was to end around 8 am, but by this time the moon had already set. As I was looking at the charts, I figured out, that the moon would set more or less fully eclipsed. In front of my inner photographic eye I imagined a copper colored, eclipsed moon setting in the ocean in the first light of the day, ahh, what a picture....worth crawling out of bed at 3:45 am!

It started out sufficiently clear, some clouds were predicted, but that should just add to the drama, or so I hoped.

Long exposure of the full moon scene, right before the eclipse started. The long exposure makes it look almost like daylight.

I had set up two cameras on two tripods. The first camera was equipped with a telephoto lens to show the details.

Here the results:

@ 4:45 am

@ 5:03 am

@ 5:26 am

@ 5:49 am

@ 6:03 am

And then all of a sudden, the moon disappeared in a low cloud cover, this was the last I saw of it....

@ 6:15 am

With the other camera, this one equipped with a wide-angle lens, I took an image every 10 minutes or so. I then put all the images together to show the course of the eclipse (click on the image to see a bigger version):

Frozen to the bone, after not enough sleep and being out on the oceans edge for hours, it was rather disappointing to see the moon just vanish in the clouds...but a beautiful sunrise and a nice hot cup of coffee later at home made it all good again. Next time then.....