For those that didn't know, or didn't care, the ancient dragons were out and about devouring natural satellites of small, blue, backward planets. This is to punish us for evils such as "The View", reality TV, gas-guzzling SUVs, North Korea, the fur industry, artificial sweeteners that cause cancer in rats, cigarettes, government "by the people" and hard water.
There was a great, total, lunar eclipse on February 20th visible to us in the US starting after 9 pm that evening. At the behest of my father, I took some pictures with my decent digital camera...an older Sony DSC-W1, five megapixel outfit. It is a nice camera but only a 3x optical zoom. I'm coming from an SLR background and have lots of lenses and bodies from Minolta, so if I were smart I would have gotten some film out of the fridge and my tripod and did some long-time exposures...but I am apparently not that bright. Point-and-shoot cameras don't really do it for me, but I got it cheap and tax free on a trip to New Hampshire.
If I was even smarter than that, I would have bought a new Sony digital SLR body to go with all my Minolta lenses (Sony bought Minolta's DSLR business back in, like, 2006...Yay!). But I bought a fancy-schmancy tankless water heater instead. I guess we have to have priorities. I like taking hot showers.
So I apologize in advance for the crappy pictures...
Fig. 1: An attempted long-time exposure. 15s at f2.8, 22mm. 9:52 pm ET.
In the image above, the moon was about half-covered. The right was bright as normal, the left a very dark gray. The green-black mass on the left is a pine tree in my front yard, the streak on the right is an amateur radio antenna, a vertical for the 6-meter band, at my parent's house. It isn't too bad of an image...way underexposed...but you can only do so much with a point-and-shoot, and I was holding it at the time.
Fig. 2: About 1/3 covered, 9:20 pm ET
There was a great, total, lunar eclipse on February 20th visible to us in the US starting after 9 pm that evening. At the behest of my father, I took some pictures with my decent digital camera...an older Sony DSC-W1, five megapixel outfit. It is a nice camera but only a 3x optical zoom. I'm coming from an SLR background and have lots of lenses and bodies from Minolta, so if I were smart I would have gotten some film out of the fridge and my tripod and did some long-time exposures...but I am apparently not that bright. Point-and-shoot cameras don't really do it for me, but I got it cheap and tax free on a trip to New Hampshire.
If I was even smarter than that, I would have bought a new Sony digital SLR body to go with all my Minolta lenses (Sony bought Minolta's DSLR business back in, like, 2006...Yay!). But I bought a fancy-schmancy tankless water heater instead. I guess we have to have priorities. I like taking hot showers.
So I apologize in advance for the crappy pictures...
Fig. 1: An attempted long-time exposure. 15s at f2.8, 22mm. 9:52 pm ET.In the image above, the moon was about half-covered. The right was bright as normal, the left a very dark gray. The green-black mass on the left is a pine tree in my front yard, the streak on the right is an amateur radio antenna, a vertical for the 6-meter band, at my parent's house. It isn't too bad of an image...way underexposed...but you can only do so much with a point-and-shoot, and I was holding it at the time.
Fig. 2: About 1/3 covered, 9:20 pm ETI took the pictures at the maximum optical zoom (3x). Digital zoom would have just made the image crappier. They really aren't too awful bad. I ramped up the quality to fine and 5 megapixels. The resulting images were pretty big, 2592px x 1944px and 1.7Mb in size. The camera takes JPEGs.
Fig. 3: About 1/2 covered, 9:43 pm ET.
I took a number of shots each time I went out hoping that at least one of the group would be decent. I didn't linger outside since it was about 18°! Brrr!
Fig. 4: About 3/4 covered, 9:53 pm ET.
As the moon continued to enter the shadow, it began to take on a definite reddish hue. It is too bad you can't see it in the images. I'm going to have to get a decent telescope and a real digital SLR so I can get good images of things like this.
Fig. 5: Nearing totality, 9:59 pm ET.
The closer to totality it got, the redder it became. It was an unusual and beautiful sight.
Fig. 6: Totality, at least as close as it went for me. 10:16 pm ET.
Fig. 3: About 1/2 covered, 9:43 pm ET. I took a number of shots each time I went out hoping that at least one of the group would be decent. I didn't linger outside since it was about 18°! Brrr!
Fig. 4: About 3/4 covered, 9:53 pm ET.As the moon continued to enter the shadow, it began to take on a definite reddish hue. It is too bad you can't see it in the images. I'm going to have to get a decent telescope and a real digital SLR so I can get good images of things like this.
Fig. 5: Nearing totality, 9:59 pm ET.The closer to totality it got, the redder it became. It was an unusual and beautiful sight.
Fig. 6: Totality, at least as close as it went for me. 10:16 pm ET.I whittled the images down to 640px x 480px to get them down to a reasonable size, and centered the moon. The rest of the image was black anyway.
It must have not agreed with the dragons, because it is back out there tonight.
It must have not agreed with the dragons, because it is back out there tonight.
1 comment:
I loved the dragon part of this.
Personally, I'm a point and shoot sort of person. I can't be bothered to mess around with lens or whatnot. I just want to get the damn picture taken and for the camera to do all the work. ;-)
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