YALE (no, not the University)

Yet Another Lunar Eclipse.

Usually I'm a bit more disinterested in Lunar Eclipses.  They come, they go.  The popular press and media makes a bit deal about it.  The Blood Moon Super Size Me Things Come in Threes Apocalypse.  Sigh.  And why am I so grumpy with the seemingly ever more popular characterization of "Blood Moon".   It doesn't look like blood.  It's orange.  Copper maybe.  Orange Moon or Copper Moon are much better descriptions with less drama/pseudo religious connotation.  Lunar Eclipse would be even better.  I cringe when I hear kids saying, "did you see the blood moon?"  I hope they actually understand what is happening - after all we have come a long ways in the last few thousand years.

The excitement at a "Super" lunar eclipse is also overbaked.  Last one until 2033!  Well sorry, the "Super" part is accounted by the moon being at perigee-syzygy (read closest approach in the moon's elliptical orbit).  This results in a colossal 14% or so increase in the size of the disk.  If only "Super" meant 14% bigger to McDonalds.  I'm pretty sure there is not a human on the planet than can say with any certainty that they can tell the moon is 14% bigger in apparent diameter.  So it goes.

The next full lunar eclipse around these parts (New Mexico) is in January 2018 so we've only a little more than 2 years to wait as long as you don't care about the "Super" part - which you can't see anyway.

OK rant off.  With all of the above out of the way ...

This one was real pretty.  Don't remember the last time I saw a lunar eclipse so close to the horizon. Makes for a bit more drama when you can see the eclipsed moon next to terrestrial features like mountains or cityscapes.

Eclipsed Moon over the Sandias and northern outskirts of Albuquerque NM, Sept 28, 2015
Note the traffic on I-25 streaking across the base of the Sandias.

This lunar eclipse was also a opportunity to connect with friends near and far.  Most notably with my astro-posse hanging out in the coastal hills of the San Francisco peninsula waiting pensively for a break in the clouds.  As we are an hour ahead I was able to send them updates and they in turn kept me updated on navigating crowds and clouds.  Fortunately they were rewarded with a break in the clouds with just a few minutes of totality remaining.

Clouds to the East also kept my Austin Texas pal waiting nervously.  With friends and family by his side they waited with little hope ... but towards the end of totality they did get a glimpse.  Nice thing about the eclipse is you can make what you want of it - nice excuse to get together - outside at night!

A friend in Los Gatos texted ... can't see a thing!  But I don't think they cared much as they dined on delicious food and the Raki flowed ....  People together, connecting, outside, at night.

New friends and neighbors were texting excitedly as they watched from their homes nearby.  My wife and oldest daughter joined me on the room of our patio.  We watched together as I took advantage of our clear skies and clicked off picture after picture with the camera on a tripod.

Pretty orange moon suspended in the inky dark punctuated with stars.
Mid eclipse through 200mm lens on a static tripod.

With anything much more than a 100mm lens you really need a tracking mount to get any kind of detail on the moon.  Exposure times much more than a quarter second will blur details - even with mild magnification.

I still think the best way to enjoy a lunar eclipse is in a comfy chair with no visual aids or cameras.  Just relaxing with friends and family, near or far, under the night sky.  So wonderful to begin to see stars appear and later, mid eclipse, the Milky Way.  It would be wonderful if the lunar orbit wasn't so inclined so we could enjoy a lunar eclipse every Full Moon.  If that were the case I wonder how it would have changed how the ancients viewed eclipses and if we would have stamped out the memes of evil portent long ago.

As it is we only have to wait until 2018 to do this again (at least here).  It will be another opportunity to get together with family and friends under the wonders of the night sky.  As long as that happens I guess I can live with another "Blood Moon".

Venus, Moon, Gate

Another DSLR shot to make me feel like I am still imaging the skies!  Last Friday was (another) cloudy day so I didn't expect to see the conjunction at all but went outside at dusk and was surprised to see we caught a break.  The Western sky was clear so I quickly ran in to grab the camera.  Ran off a few quick shots with the 24mm lens.  Impossible to capture Mars along with Venus and Moon without resorting to combining images with different exposures but I noticed a nice composition with the Gate to our little courtyard.  So my conjunction substitutes Mars for the Gate.

Venus, Moon, Gate ... click here to flickr

Not much deep sky work happening here in North Central New Mexico.  I blame the near persistent cloud cover.   To those that image the sky (at least deep sky) the presence of *any* clouds is reason enough to close up shop.  Many people will exclaim ... but it was so clear last night!  Well, being able to see some stars, even a lot of stars doesn't quite cut it.  Looks like I will need to adapt to trying to image "in between" on those nights of intermittent clouds.  Yes I was spoiled by the days or weeks long periods of clear cloudless skies in the North California Bay Area.  Of course they are also suffering a severe drought ...  On balance I guess I'll learn to deal with the clouds!

Taken in Corrales New Mexico, February 20, 2015

Canon T2i (stock), Canon 24mm f/2.8L  @ f/1.6,  1/8sec exposure, ISO 400 

Raw image cropped and mangled Lightroom

Moon over Sandias

The nearly full moon rising above the Sandia Mountains just east of Albuquerque.  The mountains are bathed in radiant reds and oranges during sunset which likely gives rise to their namesake - Sandia is spanish for watermelon.  Under the right conditions the mountain side seems to radiate light - a truly beautiful sight.  Look quick though ... the effect lasts only a few minutes.

click here to Flickr for full size version

Taken in Corrales New Mexico, November 5, 2014
Canon T2i (stock), Canon 200mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM @ f/5.6  
Raw image cropped and mangled Lightroom

First Image, New Digs

I guess this will have to count as my first "astrophoto" from my new home in Corrales, New Mexico.  It's a landscape, it's the (Full! Super-Duper) Moon, but it'll have to count.

Super Moon, New Mexico style

The imaging gear remains packed away in the garage ... I collected my last data sometime in January and then began preparing for the move from California to New Mexico.  Now we are ramping up "Monsoon" season here so I expect any deep sky imaging will have to wait a couple more months.

Until then I'll have to practice some astro-landscape and conventional (read daylight!) images. New Mexico has a never-ending supply of clouds, lightning, mountains, deserts, wonderful people and other interesting things so I'll have plenty to do.

The above is a composite of 3 images.  Dynamic range is just too dang large.  Waited too long to cheat take advantage of a twilight Full Moon shot.  Done in a hurry (reminder to self ... keep camera on tripod ready to shoot 24/7 while in New Mexico).  All three exposures were "off" so much more practice is needed.  Also needed to fire up the (gasp) dreaded PS for some dark art higgledy piggledy.  I admire anyone who has burned devoted a portion of their brain cells to mastering, shudder, PS.

I'm sad for the posterization but that'll teach me to get proper exposures next time.  I wanted to avoid the "pasted-in" moon look and feel OK with how it came out.  It was a remarkable full moon in person and it kind of captures the feel.

By the way ... the brightly light golden building is the Sandia casino.  It's going to be a feature from any pictures taken from my patio ... guess we'll have to get used to it.

 New Mexico Super Moon

Taken in Corrales New Mexico, July 14, 2014
Canon T2i (stock), Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM @ f/4.5Composite: 1/100,  1/25, 2sec exposures @ISO400
Raw images mangled in PS5 and Lightroom
Image Capture with Sequence Generator Pro

Eclipse Movie!

I had the Canon T2i / 200mm EF-L (with Baader Filter on the lens cap) ticking off an image every minute during the annular eclipse this last May 20.  The camera had 140 images on it by the time the sun set behind the eaves of the house.  I focused as well as I could by hand on sunspots but they were pretty tiny at this image scale.

When I had a chance to look at the images I realized I was in for the same spot of trouble I was in for the lunar eclipse movie.   Each time the scope was re-centered the image would obviously shift in the image frame.  This means they all required alignment.  I still don't know of any better way to do this than by hand ... there are no stars in the field to take advantage of normal image registration software.  

So each frame was lovingly nudged into alignment by hand (in PS4).  All 140 of them.  Then cropped in Lightroom, exported as jpgs, and finally sequenced into a movie with Quicktime 7.

It looks a bit nicer if you view it at youtube so you might want to click the link.  At the very end you can see the sun setting behind a tree and finally the edge of the roof cutting it off for a premature end.

I chose to run the movie at 10 frames per second so the motion seems smooth.  The whole clip is only about 14 seconds!  Almost 2.5hrs worth!  And of course much more than that to align all those frames! Ah well ...  I've done worse for less.

The Baader filter gives a neutral white light image.  I noticed many of the images and movies out there are colorized - on purpose or due to the type of filter used.  They are rather more dramatic but I chose to keep any artificial flavorings out of the mix.

It was a good dry run for the Venus Transit on June 5.  I learned I really don't have enough image scale at 200mm and if I don't use the refractor I'll have to get a tele-extender.  Experiments underway!

Lunar Citizens Brace for Super Earth Event

POX News Exclusive:  Dateline Clavius Crater.

This weekend's new earth cycle will bring our globe closer to earth than anytime since, well, almost an entire decade ago.  Morbix Leaxiue, prominent astrologer and anti-vaccination activist, predicts this "Super Earth" event will trigger massive moonquakes, mare basalt flows, crater wall landslides and the general overall end of everything we hold dear.  "We've got the earth pulling on one side of us, Saturn and Tyche pulling on the other side of us ... it's like being quartered on a planetary scale!"

He urges all lunar citizens to immediately evacuate to the far side of the moon because, as he states, "Well, its farther away from earth right?  What we can't see won't hurt us."


Hysterical lunar citizens around the volatile "ring of not-much-happening here" Mare Serenitatis region have been seen in local bigbox stores stocking up on emergency supplies, hard hats, and rare water ice crystals thought to bring divine protection.  One fear gripped shopper said,  "My cousin sent me this email all about the SuperEarth.  I didn't believe it at first but then I checked the internet and finally the cable news channels and was shocked to see the reports.  I mean, if it's on cable news it must be true!" [emphasis ours].


While prominent credible scientists stress this "Super Earth" event will not trigger any natural disasters that won't stop us from reporting the voices of fringe groups and pseudo-scientists in the interest of fair and balanced reporting.

Tune in to POX News for this and other Live Breaking News recycled every hour.

Timelapse Eclipse

I wasn't sure what to do with all of the pictures of the eclipse so I decided to assemble a timelapse.

Only captured the first half of the event due to clouds.  Crickets just for fun.

What a colossal pain!  There has to be a better way to do this.  Has to.  If someone knows what it is please leave some advice in the comments.  I'll describe what I did just to share the pain.

Going into any imaging session with some clear plans and goals ahead of time will save yourself a world of hurt later.  This is something I almost never do.  I hurt a lot.

If I knew ahead of time I was going to shoot a time lapse sequence I would have set up on a accurate polar aligned mount to save the painful image alignment process later on.  Also I would shoot 2 or 3 exposure times for each segment to dial in the constantly changing light as the moon is eclipsed.  Obviously this doubles or triples the number of exposures but that would have come in handy later on.

I decided to downsample all the images so I would have smaller files to deal with to assemble the movie.  The plan was to go back and do this with the full resolution pictures but it took me so long to do this with the smaller images I just can't bear to do it now ... or ever.  

Now remember my images are drifting all over the frame do to inaccurate polar alignment, re-framing, bumping the mount while checking focus and changing camera conditions.  How to align all these images?  I figured using Photoshop content aware alignment would work ... but alas it only worked on the images from the beginning of the sequence - as the moon went deeper into the eclipse photoshop got confused.  Maybe Registax?  I downloaded and fussed for a while be it was too much to learn without being absolutely sure it would give me what I wanted.

What I wanted was aligned and cropped individual images.  Maybe Registax could do that but I didn't see how. OK.  Back to photoshop.  Time to put on the hair shirt.

Load up all the images (downsized) into separate layers.  Make top layer (full moon) visible - turn off all other layers.  Blend mode difference, opacity 80%.  Make the layer immediately underneath visible and highlight it.  Manually move to align.  Turn off visibility of this just aligned layer. Select visibility of next layer down and highlight.  Align.

Repeat 150 more times.  Yeah.

As you go through toss away the bad ones.  Wrong exposure, clouds, out of focus, whatever. Oh yeah, don't forget to go back and return your blend mode and opacity of the top image to normal.

Then crop the whole mess and then save each layer as a file (at least there is a script in the file menu for that!).   Then load up all of these into iMovie (we don't do Windows in Cilice-land - I am grateful to the axemen for my conversion).  Fiddle, export, be satisfied.  It's not perfect.  Far from it.  Don't think about repeating with higher resolution.  Just *don't* do it.  Not worth it.  Really.  Don't look back.

Now go enjoy your Christmas!

Red Moon over Orion

After I clicked the shutter on the last image (see previous post) I had a few moments to enjoy the eclipse by eye before clouds rolled overhead.  I just don't seem to be able to watch anything for long before I want to grab the camera.  In this case I had only a couple minutes.  Like two.

I quickly removed the refractor from the travel mount and replaced it with the camera body and 10-22 EF-S lens.  Frame. Click.  Oh ... great picture of my chain link fence in the bottom half of the frame.  I've got to get to an area behind our yard with a clear view.  I grab the whole mount (it is light) and before I walk away I remember I am attached to a dew heaters and a battery.  Nice.

OK.  Calmly make sure I am not tethered and walk away again.  Up and out of the backyard trying not to stumble in the eerie not-moon light.

I plop the mount down (tick tock the clouds are coming),  point in, well, that direction, guess an exposure time and take the picture.  Oh yeah! Focusing would be helpful ... (tick tock) ...there is Sirius at least.  Focused.  Take the picture.  Whew.  I spend the next 5 minutes taking pictures with random exposure times but it was that first (focused non-chain link fenced) picture that was the best.

click image for super-size-me or here for flickr

I spent a couple hours minding the camera on the telescope taking picture after picture and occasionally looking up.  But watching Orion reach in vain for the red moon before drowning in the clouds is what I will remember from the lunar eclipse of 2010. 

Happy Winter Solstice!

Red Moon over Orion

San Jose, CA  December 21, 2010
Canon T2i (stock), Canon EF-S 10-22mm @ 13mm  f4
Astrotrac Travel System Mount
15sec exposure @ ISO800
in-camera dark subtraction

Rain on Full Moons (except on occasion of lunar eclipse)

One of the best lunar eclipses in quite some time and it is rainy and cloudy all day.  The one time I actually want to look at the moon, to watch it's blinding light get swallowed by earths shadow, and winter weather comes to spoil the party.

But come dusk, a break in the clouds.  I quickly set up shop:  Little 80mm refractor on travel mount.  Attach camera.  Focus on full moon.  Cover set up with large garbage bag so the rain gods cannot see a telescope in the open.  Go inside.  Wait.

The garbage bag must of worked as the clouds went north, south, and only occasionally by the moon.  Come showtime it was mostly cloud free until near totality.  Here is one of the last shots I took before a massive cloud bank spotted me and rushed to cover.

click a couple times for XL version

I was so very lucky to see so much of the eclipse and had forgotten how spectacular it is to watch the stars come out.

Since we are apparently stuck with a bright moon, and pretty obvious that we need rain I am of the belief that the two should go together.  Let's get our rain durning the full moons only and not waste perfectly good dark skies with clouds.  Except on lunar eclipses.  Then it needs to be clear.  I don't think that is too much to ask do you?

Lunar Eclipse
San Jose, CA  December 21, 2010
Canon T2i (stock), Astrotech AT80LE, 480mm  f5
Astrotrac Travel System Mount
1.6sec @ ISO800

(dis) Connected

Stormy weather continues.  As often happens here the wifi went down for 3 days.  I've wanted to post but truth be told there isn't much to report in the way of clear skies.  I'm at the point where I was planning hoping to get some night sky time - the moon is finally rising late enough from behind Kitchen Mesa to give me exposures in the dark dark.  So one week to go.  We'll see ... but it is not looking promising.

Thursday and Friday the skies cleared between 2-3am.  Still too moon-ey at that hour.  Frustrating to get up to a perfect cloudless blue sky only to have it cloud up by 9-10am.  On Friday I got up at 6am to go on a hike to the top of Chimney Rock before breakfast.  I took what might be my only astronomy picture of the trip - even if it was of my nemesis.

See!  No clouds.  A condition that existed for about 3 hours.