13 replies to this topic

[james7ca]

It seems like images of the eclipse are being scattered within many threads and I've even noticed cross-posting of the same images in multiple CN threads (usually frowned upon, I believed) and thus since I expect that I will end up with multiple images of the eclipse I thought I'd start my own thread.

 

I kind of lucked out for a change since we had rain today and the forecast was for mostly cloudy skies for the next 24 or more hours. But, I watched the satellite feed and estimated that there might be a partial break in the clouds around midnight and that indeed happened. So, I had some parting of the clouds that allowed me to image around the peak of totality although I don't think is was ever perfectly clear (haze, thin low clouds with a higher and heavier overcast that I tried to avoid). I even had some drizzle at around 11PM that caused me to cover the camera and mount.

 

First up is a single shot (i.e. no stacking) using a tracked exposure with a full-frame Nikon Z8 and a NIKKOR Z 180-600mm lens at its maximum zoom. This image was processed entirely in Photoshop and the reproduction shown below recorded background stars down to somewhere between magnitude 13.5 and 14. The 1600 x 1200 pixel image is hosted on CN and you can view it at that size by clicking on the preview. There are additional capture details in the image captions.

 

I have longer sequences that need to be checked for clouds and stacked so I should have several more images to post over the coming days (all done with the same equipment).

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Edited by james7ca, 14 March 2025 - 10:31 AM.

[Andre48]

Beautiful! 

Thanks for sharing!

[marvyyk]

Awesome image!! 

[james7ca]

Andre48 and marvyyk thanks for the notice and similarly to everyone else for the likes.

 

Here is another shot that I think is somewhat interesting. A star of magnitude 10.7 about ready to be occulted by the totally eclipsed moon. From my location near to San Diego this was perhaps the third brightest star that was occulted by the fully eclipsed moon (the brightest may have been SAO 118964 at magnitude 9.8). This is a 200% enlargement from the actual capture scale and the processing was done in Photoshop and PixInsight.

 

I think the timing should be accurate to a few seconds and the mid-exposure time was 12:12:08. SkySafari Pro v7 indicated that the occultation occurred at 12:12:17AM and an image that was taken five seconds later showed the star right on the edge of the moon. So, SkySafari agrees almost exactly with the image. When this shot was taken the star was probably about three arc seconds from the limb of the moon but there is some uncertainty in the timing since the exposures weren't instantaneous (and the moon was moving in relation to the star). See the image captions for more details.

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Edited by james7ca, 15 March 2025 - 12:31 AM.

[james7ca]

Here is a stack of 24 subs that were each exposed for 4 seconds. You can click on the preview to see the 1600 x 1200 pixel image as hosted here on CN. As before there are additional details in the image captions. Near to the lower left limb of the moon you can see the star TYC 0271-0521-1 that was occulted shortly after the registration reference used for this master integration.

 

Image processing in Photoshop, Siril, and PixInsight. To prevent trailing on the stars I did a photocomposition of star aligned and moon aligned masters (similar to processing a comet image).

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Edited by james7ca, 15 March 2025 - 09:59 PM.

[Jkaiser3000]

I also saw a few stars occulted or emerging from behind the eclipsed moon but, none were as dim as yours. I managed to see and capture 89 Leonis emerging. What’s funny is I thought those were hot pixels at first but when I recentered the moon in the frame, the “hot pixels” moved as well lol. I find it awe inspiring to the the moon’s proper motion directly

 

Nice set of images 

[james7ca]

jkaiser, thanks.

 

Post #5 is somewhat of a work in progress given that I still have more than twice as many subs to combine. I also think I can do better on the tonal range and sharpness.

 

In any case, the reason why I started with only 24 subs is because that sequence included the occultation of the star TYC 0271-0521-1 and I wanted to do an animation of that specific event. So, below is that animation that coves the final two minutes before the eclipsed moon moved in front of the star. Created from the same star-aligned series of 4s exposures used to create the background for post #5 (one capture every five seconds, with a delay of one second between each exposure). This reproduction/animation is at the original capture scale (i.e. 1:1 from the still frames).

 

I'm somewhat surprised that these four second exposures worked as well as they did since there had to be some movement in the stars and moon during the exposure (since no single tracking rate could have matched both). However, I have sequences that used a higher ISO and shorter exposure and those might even work better in terms of sharpness. I had switched the tracking to lunar at the start of imaging but when I went to shut everything down I noticed that it had somehow gone back to siderial. But, lunar tracking is never that good since the moon changes rates almost constantly and it moves in both declination and right ascension and most (all?) mounts used a fixed tracking rate for lunar and perhaps track only on right ascension.

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Edited by james7ca, 15 March 2025 - 11:49 PM.

[Tom Glenn]

Nice images James!  I was able to get outside and take a series as well, although I haven't had time to finish inspecting them yet.  I agree that we got lucky with the weather, given the rain that we've had last week.  At my house, the Moon would occasionally disappear behind fast moving clouds, but there were large stretches where it was in the clear.  You've done a very nice job with processing the images.

[james7ca]

Tom, thanks.

 

I was surprised that I got a chance to image the eclipse at all given that I even had some rain just one hour before the peak of totality. Below is a satellite image that shows the cloud cover over San Diego county just before midnight and if you look just off the coast in northern county (center shift right) you can see the clear area that passed just to my west but still good enough to allow some images of the eclipse. I think that break in the clouds passed over the coast near mid-county so maybe that is what you saw down south from my location. As usual, all of the jet contrails that were over southern California didn't help and some of these "clouds" formed because of that activity.

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Edited by james7ca, 16 March 2025 - 02:15 AM.

[james7ca]

I also saw a few stars occulted or emerging from behind the eclipsed moon but, none were as dim as yours. I managed to see and capture 89 Leonis emerging. What’s funny is I thought those were hot pixels at first but when I recentered the moon in the frame, the “hot pixels” moved as well lol. I find it awe inspiring to the the moon’s proper motion directly...

There weren't any bright stars near to the fully eclipsed moon from my location. But, since you were in Caracas the perspective change obviously produced a shift of the moon against the background stars. Below is what 89 Leonis looked like from near to San Diego. It was more than one degree away from the moon although with a magnitude near 5.8.

 

If you look closely at this simulation from SkySafari Pro you can see the star TYC 0271-0521-1 that I captured, just off the moon's limb to the lower left. This simulation also shows the full field of view of my camera (all of the above images are crops from the full frame).

 

Also an actual image that shows the full-frame coverage of the 600mm lens on the Nikon Z8. You can see 89 Leonis as the brightest star toward the upper right (near the edge, not the corner). This same shot recorded TYC 0271-0521-1 and quite a few more background stars, but the vast majority are too faint to be seen at this image scale.

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Edited by james7ca, 16 March 2025 - 02:18 AM.

[james7ca]

Probably my final, a stack with 64 x 4s and a more "natural" processing with even more stars (down to magnitude 15) and better detail.

 

Image processing with Photoshop, Siril, PixInsight, and AutoStakkert!.

 

The only thing left might be to see if the sequences done at a faster shutter speed and higher ISO look better than this.

 

Note, based upon NASA's Lunar Eclipse website this eclipse was arguably the best positioned for the west coast of the U.S. for the next ten or more years. We'll have another total lunar eclipse next March but it won't reach maximum until something like 3:30AM PDT and thus will be pretty low in the sky. After that will be June 2029 with a very deep eclipse but it will happen very early in the evening will moonrise already being in total eclipse (but, that might make for some interesting shots with the horizon). However, the east coast should get a pretty good view. Hawaii will get a good shot in October 2033.

 

Here is NASA's lunar eclipse list until 2030:

 

 https://eclipse.gsfc...decade2021.html

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Edited by james7ca, 16 March 2025 - 10:58 AM.

[Borodog]

A wonderful set of images, James.

[james7ca]

Mike, thanks.

 

Here is a single frame image that was taken just before totality began (i.e. before U2). I think this is closer to how the eclipse looked to the naked eye.

 

I have a sequence that was taken at this same time, but they could be hard to register. Then again, they may not need registration since they were taken in rapid succession.

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Edited by james7ca, 17 March 2025 - 10:38 AM.

[BYoesle]

It did seem to be one of the darker TLEs in recent memory.