Lunar Eclipse

For those who got clouded out

Nikkor 200mmQ f5.6 iso200 10 sec StarTracker.

Enjoy.

hha

Nice. I forgot about it until my kiddo asked me about it… looks a lot like mine

Nice! Without tracking does one need to follow the 500 rule? I love getting stars into the same FOV-- what's the ideal shutter speed and focal length to use for that (and non streaky stars and non blurry moon)?

That's great, I had clouds when I went to bed but still set my alarm to go off at 03:45 at night. Needless to say, though I was hardly able to turn off my alarm in my sleepy state of mind, I did not manage to get up. Also, the moon is so low on the horizon at those hours that I probably wouldn't see much of it anyway 

Janer_2 wrote:

That's great, I had clouds when I went to bed but still set my alarm to go off at 03:45 at night. Needless to say, though I was hardly able to turn off my alarm in my sleepy state of mind, I did not manage to get up. Also, the moon is so low on the horizon at those hours that I probably wouldn't see much of it anyway

It was between 11:30 PM to 1 AM here, I slept from 9 PM to Midnight 12 lol when I woke up there were clouds and I could not see it, but right at 1 AM the clouds parted and I saw it for 15 minutes before the clouds came back.

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

Nice! Without tracking does one need to follow the 500 rule? I love getting stars into the same FOV-- what's the ideal shutter speed and focal length to use for that (and non streaky stars and non blurry moon)?

For a 24 Mp camera the rule of 500 is way to slow. The first picture, which shows the moon emerging from the hillside at about 12 degree elevation, was taken from a fixed tripod with the 200mm lens using 0.2 sec. If you expect pinpoint stars, 0.2sec already corresponds to a one pixel sky trail, i.e. the rule should be  shorter than 50/f[mm]=0.2 seconds. The second shot (10sec, 200mm at f/5.6 iso200) was on a star tracking tripod, This was part of a  sequence of one 10 second shot every 60 seconds with an intervalometer.

There is enough time to get ready for the next eclipse.

hha

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

Nice! Without tracking does one need to follow the 500 rule? I love getting stars into the same FOV-- what's the ideal shutter speed and focal length to use for that (and non streaky stars and non blurry moon)?

The 500 rule was for the old 35mm film cameras. Today with digital cameras we tend to use the 200 rule for full frame sensors and the 133 rule for APS-C sensors. However, the Moon during full eclipse at maximum will be very dark, so without tracking you won't get much detail, and you will typically have to turn up ISO so high that the image suffers from too much noise. If you try to stretch out the shutter you will end up with blurred details and star elongations. So best to track if you can.

OP, nice capture. Thankfully there is another full eclipse coming in November 2022 for those of us who got clouded out of this one. May in my location is always iffy as far as weather goes, and sure enough thick clouds and thunderstorms rolled in about an hour before the eclipse began and stuck around until the eclipse was over.

Silly question as I haven't tried lunar tracking before, only deep sky objects, how about polar alignment for this sort of tracking. Does it need to be just as precise, seeing as exposures are going to be a lot shorter?

If the next time it happens it's late fall I won't have any issues doing alignment, but good to know anyway. I'd like to attempt a a stack with the different stages of the eclipse sometime.

And a few with the clouds!

These were taken with the Panasonic S5 and70-300mm (@300mm) kit lens.

Janer_2 wrote:

Silly question as I haven't tried lunar tracking before, only deep sky objects, how about polar alignment for this sort of tracking. Does it need to be just as precise, seeing as exposures are going to be a lot shorter?

If the next time it happens it's late fall I won't have any issues doing alignment, but good to know anyway. I'd like to attempt a a stack with the different stages of the eclipse sometime.

That is a good question, and the short answer is no. When I track objects like the Moon I do what I call a sloppy alignment. Basically I point the tracker in a N and S orientation using a laser to get it close to an object I know is close to N or S. Then I tilt the tracker up to match my latitude, using the Clinometer app on my iPhone. Sloppy for sure, but it works for 8 to 10 sec shots at 400mm, and it works for 30 to 60 sec shots for WA and UWA lenses. It takes less than 5 minutes. Precision isn't as necessary for this kind of shot, whereas it needs to be spot on for deep sky tracking because those are often multi-minute shots. However, for lunar tracking remember to set the tracker into lunar mode since the stars track across the sky a tiny bit faster than the Moon. I've been able to get really nice 8 sec tracks of full eclipses using this method. 8 sec is more than adequate in this scenario.

W5JCK wrote:

Janer_2 wrote:

Silly question as I haven't tried lunar tracking before, only deep sky objects, how about polar alignment for this sort of tracking. Does it need to be just as precise, seeing as exposures are going to be a lot shorter?

If the next time it happens it's late fall I won't have any issues doing alignment, but good to know anyway. I'd like to attempt a a stack with the different stages of the eclipse sometime.

That is a good question, and the short answer is no. When I track objects like the Moon I do what I call a sloppy alignment. Basically I point the tracker in a N and S orientation using a laser to get it close to an object I know is close to N or S. Then I tilt the tracker up to match my latitude, using the Clinometer app on my iPhone. Sloppy for sure, but it works for 8 to 10 sec shots at 400mm, and it works for 30 to 60 sec shots for WA and UWA lenses. It takes less than 5 minutes. Precision isn't as necessary for this kind of shot, whereas it needs to be spot on for deep sky tracking because those are often multi-minute shots. However, for lunar tracking remember to set the tracker into lunar mode since the stars track across the sky a tiny bit faster than the Moon. I've been able to get really nice 8 sec tracks of full eclipses using this method. 8 sec is more than adequate in this scenario.

Thanks for the reply!
That's quite good news then, a "quick and dirty" alignment with a compass should do in that case. Only worry I have is how my Star Adventurer would handle the Nikkor 200-500mm in such a scenario. Might be better of with my afp 70-300mm in terms of weight. 
That image is beautiful by the way!

Here's mine from a Canon 5DSr and 400 f5.6 on a Celestron AVX aligned pretty much as Jack mentions lol.

I too had a intervalometer set up every 1 minute and had the Canon and an Olympus set to take bracketed exposures from 1/400 to 10 seconds every two stops.  Thought I might have to change something over the duration but this covered things I "think" well enough...though now I have quite a few images to toss in the bin.

The Olympus I had a wide field lens on it their 12mm f2 set at f4 on a fixed tripod  which I plan to Photoshop together to show the path and color change.

Caught a plane in the later of these two one minute apart photos!

Was great fun and we had clear enough skies.

Dan

Janer_2 wrote:

Thanks for the reply!
That's quite good news then, a "quick and dirty" alignment with a compass should do in that case. Only worry I have is how my Star Adventurer would handle the Nikkor 200-500mm in such a scenario. Might be better of with my afp 70-300mm in terms of weight.
That image is beautiful by the way!

For comparison, my Star Adventurer 1st gen. works well with my Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens which is big and heavy. The important thing is the tripod. I use a 50 lb tripod with 2” dia. legs made for telescopes. A shaky or flimsy tripod will ruin a shoot. So be sure to get a well built one. Mine is overkill, but better safe than sorry! But even with my heavy tripod, the big 400mm can only reliably produce 30 to 60sec shots with the SA. Just be sure that you tighten down all the connections.

Luckily skies cleared in Tampa in time for the eclipse, they then clouded up again right after 2 AM when the eclipse finished!

I got good results with the "new-to-me" Meade ETX-125. it's one of the original models, not the later ones with GoTo mount, and its fork mount was totally shot. I was able to mount the tube assembly onto an iOptron Sky Guider Pro, and I modified the wedge on the heavy-duty Meade field tripod to solidly mount the iOptron --- turned out to be much more stable than the iOptron's smaller wedge.

I shot with a Canon M6ii --- crop sensor mirrorless camera but great for astro with its 32.5 MP sensor. A Viltrox 0.71x speed booster (focal reducer) made the combo perfect for lunar photography --- with the entire Moon just fitting into the APS-C frame. The speed booster makes the ETX-125's 1900mm f15 focal a much more useful 1350mm f11.

SKyGuider Pro tracked like a champ --- even 30s exposures at 1350mm are near-perfect. I used the lunar tracking rate and was surprised to see a star 'trail' in the 30-second exposure of totality --- but it makes sense as the Moon moves its own diameter in an hour, so in 30s the star would trail 1/120 the Moon's diameter and would be visible at this magnification.

10:41 PM, Canon M6ii, Viltrox 0.71x speed booster, Meade ETX-125, 1350mm, f11, 1/400s, ISO 400

11:11 PM, Canon M6ii, Viltrox 0.71x speed booster, Meade ETX-125, 1350mm, f11, 1/20s, ISO 100

11:33 PM, Canon M6ii, Viltrox 0.71x speed booster, Meade ETX-125, 1350mm, f11, 30s, ISO 100

12:19 AM 5/16, Canon M6ii, Viltrox 0.71x speed booster, Meade ETX-125, 1350mm, f11, 8s, ISO 400

Moon in Libra: 12:21 AM 5/16, Canon M6ii, Rokinon 135mm f2.0 lens at f2.8, SVBONY CLS 1.25" city light pollution filter mounted internally next to sensor, 1.3s, ISO 500

The thing that's always a pleasant surprise is the look of a fully illuminated moon against a comfortably seen backdrop that is rich in stars. Having it be so very colorful for once is icing on the cake. I really like the Orion's Belt mimic too.

"Original size" to see the stars

bjn70 wrote:

I was clouded out so thank you to everyone who posted images.

A lot of them look like they were taken from the same vantage point though. (Of course I'm kidding because everyone on earth is taking from essentially the same vantage point.)

Interestingly, I was just noticing that they were not taken from the same vantage point!

If you look at my last image 2 several posts back (with some stars in it), and compare the star positions of my image with the positions in Just Tony's post (the post after mine) the star positions are noticeably different, and not in a way that can be explained just by being taken at different times during totality.

Mine were taken from Tampa FL and Just Tony's seems to have been taken from a point at least a thousand miles further West and North of me... I'm curious from where and at what time they were taken.

This is due to the fact that the Moon is relatively close to the Earth against the stars of the galaxy which are incredibly remote --- this is the effect of parallax.

hha wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

Nice! Without tracking does one need to follow the 500 rule? I love getting stars into the same FOV-- what's the ideal shutter speed and focal length to use for that (and non streaky stars and non blurry moon)?

For a 24 Mp camera the rule of 500 is way to slow. The first picture, which shows the moon emerging from the hillside at about 12 degree elevation, was taken from a fixed tripod with the 200mm lens using 0.2 sec. If you expect pinpoint stars, 0.2sec already corresponds to a one pixel sky trail, i.e. the rule should be shorter than 50/f[mm]=0.2 seconds. The second shot (10sec, 200mm at f/5.6 iso200) was on a star tracking tripod, This was part of a sequence of one 10 second shot every 60 seconds with an intervalometer.

There is enough time to get ready for the next eclipse.

hha

That's why I'm glad I use a 16 MP camera.  I never saw a need for higher resolution, it's empty resolution anyway and I never crop, I like to get the framing right so I don't have to.

Although for a full frame camera 24 MP would definitely be necessary.

How does the calculation work for a 16 MP M4/3 camera, at 300mm (600mm EFL), I calculated....0.8 sec to 1.0 sec....is that still too much or would that work?

Also for my superzoom camera Nikon P900, 357mm (2000mm), 16 MP, does 1/4 sec sound like the maximum that could be done at full zoom?

I don't have a star tracker, but what I do have is a piggyback mount to attach my camera on top of my telescope, which does track.  That is an SE goto mount and its tracking is limited to about 1 minute exposures at 2000mm.

W5JCK wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

Nice! Without tracking does one need to follow the 500 rule? I love getting stars into the same FOV-- what's the ideal shutter speed and focal length to use for that (and non streaky stars and non blurry moon)?

The 500 rule was for the old 35mm film cameras. Today with digital cameras we tend to use the 200 rule for full frame sensors and the 133 rule for APS-C sensors. However, the Moon during full eclipse at maximum will be very dark, so without tracking you won't get much detail, and you will typically have to turn up ISO so high that the image suffers from too much noise. If you try to stretch out the shutter you will end up with blurred details and star elongations. So best to track if you can.

OP, nice capture. Thankfully there is another full eclipse coming in November 2022 for those of us who got clouded out of this one. May in my location is always iffy as far as weather goes, and sure enough thick clouds and thunderstorms rolled in about an hour before the eclipse began and stuck around until the eclipse was over.

Hey thanks Jack, for 16 MP M4/3 what's the longest exposure I should do at 300mm (600mm EFL)?  ISO 3200-5000 is still pretty good

For my Nikon P900 at 357mm (2000mm) at full zoom at 16 MP is 1/4 sec exposure out of the question?