Partial Lunar Eclipse, June 26, 2010

Here are a few pics I shot this morning of the partial lunar eclipse with a digital SLR camera on a tripod.

Partial eclipses can be tricky. To capture the illumination on the eclipsed portion of the Moon you pretty much need to over expose the rest.

The orange color in the eclipsed portion of the Moon comes from the orange glow of sunsets and sunrises around Earth shining on to the Moon.

Trying to capture much in the way of landscape (or telescope dome) also gives you the over exposed Moon phenomenon.

But as the Moon got lower and we got closer to twilight it began to be possible to start to be easier to catch more of the landscape.

Finally the glow of twilight made it easier to capture all the detail on the land and sky that I was after, but I no longer had a good vantage point to combine the dome and sky the way I was hoping to.



Eventually the terrain got in the way and I had to relocate. Here is the setting Moon from an overlook on Palomar Mountain. The valleys below are filled with the "marine layer" clouds. Notice that the entire Moon now appears to be orange in color. This isn't due to the eclipse, but rather the Moon's low position in the sky. Just as a setting Sun appears orange, so does the Moon.


The Moon in Earth's Shadow, just before moonset:

Much earlier, just before the maximum eclipse we had a pass of the International Space Station. Fortunately, I was able to switch targets in time. Here is the International Space Station as it passed across the sky near Jupiter with the dome of the Hale Telescope on the right.