Last Lunar Eclipse Until 2010

February 20, 2008

Feb 20th, 2008 - Dust off your tripods folks! Tonight there will be a very special celestial event, presenting a wonderful photographic opportunity.

Tonight, photographers and amateur astronomers will have a wonderful opportunity to see and photograph the last lunar eclipse until the year 2010. Provided the weather cooperates, the lunar eclipse can be seen tonight in North and South America. Viewers in Europe and Africa will be able to see it before dawn on Thursday. In North America, the eclipse will be viewable at 7:01pm (PST) and 10:01 (EST).

A lunar eclipse is an event which occurs when the shadow of the earth is cast over the moon, thereby blocking it from the sun’s rays which normally illuminate it. The moon will not appear completely blacked out because indirect sunlight still passes through the earth’s atmosphere and reaches the moon. The sun’s light becomes filtered by the earth’s atmosphere, and as a result of the blue frequencies of light being filtered out, the moon will appear as a reddish/orange colour. Interestingly enough, Saturn, and the bright star Regulus (of the constellation Leo) will also be viewable, on either side of the moon. A lunar eclipse is safe to view with the naked eye, and should be a fantastic subject for photographers. Continue reading for some tips on photographing a lunar eclipse.

Photographing a Lunar Eclipse:

First and foremost, you will require the use of a tripod since most of your shots will be taken with a slower shutter speed. You’ll want to shoot several photos at different exposures, and if you have an auto-bracketing feature on your camera this will be the perfect opportunity to use it! Experiment with different aperture settings, but something in the neighbourhood of f8 or wider will produce good results. If you are using an ordinary point and shoot camera, you’ll want to extend the zoom out as far as possible. With normal point and shooters, you may find that the detail you can capture is actually less than what you will see with the naked eye, so get creative with the composition of the image perhaps with a nice background (and playing with your shooting angle).

The best focal lengths for getting a decent sized moon image (which you can then crop or work with in Photoshop), would be 300mm. If you have a 500mm lens then all the better, but we know not everybody has one of these in their back pocket! You’ll also want shutter speeds in the neighbourhood of 2 seconds or less. You can try longer settings, but the image may become blurred from the movement of the moon’s position in the sky (as the earth rotates). Try to keep your ISO’s at a maximum of 400, as you’ll easily introduce noise in your images at higher ISO’s. If you want to get a nice shot of the earth’s shadow as it begins to block out the moon, you should be able to photograph a well defined shadow at f8 ISO 400 at 1/2 sec exposure. Thankfully with the advent of digital photography, you’ll be able to shoot several shots without worrying about film. So plan your settings in advance, and have fun shooting this beautiful event.!

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