Friday, December 24, 2010

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Dec 20 - 21, 2010
We had some cloudy weather to contend with in trying to capture this somewhat rare event of a full Lunar eclipse. The fact that this eclipse was going to occur on the winter solstice made this one even more special.

As luck would have it, the clouds were pretty spotty in the beginning but increased to the point where they completely blocked the view during maximum. There were a few sucker holes that allowed for some semi-obscured views at maximum.






Before the Moon entered Earth's shadow







 





Right near maximum (taken through a brief hole in the cloud deck)







Then the clouds came in and I packed up my gear. I wasn't real happy with the results because I had to use some pretty long exposures to compensate for the decreased brightness through the clouds. I was ready for bed after fiddling with the images on the computer, but decided to see if there was any chance that there was another sucker hole to see how the eclipse had progressed. Sure enough, there was a spot with almost no clouds right around the Moon.


That didn't last long (I only got 4 quick shots) and then the clouds closed up again.







This is probably the best capture I got from those final 4 shots, this time showing the Moon as it was about to leave Earth's shadow











And here's my artsy fartsy rendition of documenting what I was able to capture through the clouds.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Favorite Lightning Shots of 2010

Here is a collage of some of my favorites shots from the 2010 lightning season. This past season started in late June and ended in early November. All of the shots here were taken from my home in the Catalina foothills north of Tucson, AZ.