The Eclipse Dozen - Full Moons of 2010 Collage

I am proud to announce a second year of successfully capturing all the full moons with the release of my "Full Moons of 2010" collage.



Using my 1000mm lens setup and my Canon XTi & T2i bodies I was able to capture the 12 full moons of 2010 AND the two lunar eclipses. The same as last year this collage is a 40"x60" at 300DPI master that is only available in 24"x36" size through my site at this time.

Unlike last year capturing most of these full moon images was relatively easy. Only one month, the 03.29.2010 "Worm" moon presented a challenge due to cloud cover. There was actually pretty thick cloud cover on both evenings of lunar eclipses but thankfully there was an hour or so period of clearings in the clouds which allowed unobstructed image capture.

Pre-Eclipse Success

Wow, the past few days have been exciting and annoying. But most importantly I got to witness and capture this weekends partial lunar eclipse in near complete detail. And as an added bonus Saturday the 26th was also my birthday Weeeee!!!

Ok so let's back up to Friday evening, June 25th 2010. I went to my favorite moon rise shooting spot in east San Jose to catch the full moon rising over Mt Hamilton, actually the far south end of it since it rose at 122° azimuth, the same azimuth as on Thursday the 24th, but my attempts to precisely locate the rising position were thwarted by cloud cover as I mention in my previous blog entry. So I had to use the force and my guesstimate based upon catching the moon rise on Wednesday. I had a friend with me who let me borrow his Canon 5D mkII for the weekend to capture the eclipse on 2 cameras. I mounted his 5D to my Bigma 50-500mm lens at full extension to catch a wider view of the moon coming over the horizon. I used my 1000mm lens combo on my Canon T2i to get an extreme closeup view of the moon cresting the horizon.

Fortunately we got there a bit early because this was my first time using the 5D in over a year and I had totally forgotten how to record video with it and he had never shot video with it. Thankfully my memories of renting it back in the spring of 2009 came back to me after a few minutes of fiddling with controls. I must say that Canon really has done a great job with making video recording more user friendly on my T2i versus the legendary 5DmkII. I'm sure his body is still using the original firmware so I'll hold off making any further comments about how difficult it was to use that body.

The important thing is that I was all setup to get the shots I've wanted to get for the longest time. Dual video recordings of the moon coming over the horizon, one at 1600mm and another at 500mm. And it was stunning!!! Unfortunately I was so excited to be shooting video on two cameras and distracted by recalling how to shoot video with the 5D that I forgot to take any stills. Thankfully I was shooting HD so here are some still extracted from the video.

Here comes Luna!



Notice the extreme atmospheric distortion around the edges of the moon




And the moon is so RED due to the atmospheric distortion as well.



The distortion is still there but reduced as the moon inherits the dusky sky from the sun.


If you look at the bottom of the image there is a little black speck on the moon, that is a plane crossing that I didn't see until I got home and started editing the video footage :)


And here the moon is ready for a night of eclipse action.


So far everything was as I had hoped for and more. I was able to capture the extreme heat distorting effects of the atmosphere causing ripples and eddies along the edges of the moon with a reddish tint as it rose through the thin haze over the mountains in other wise clear skies. It was soon dark after the moon came over the horizon and we had to leave since my shooting location was closing.

I came home and consulted my array of WeatherUnderground tabs that gave me updates on weather conditions on cities in the Bay Area. While most every coastal city from San Francisco, to Half Moon Bay to Pescadero was experiencing cloudy or over cast conditions Santa Cruz seemed to be clear. I was excited to see this because I wanted to shoot the moon and the receding eclipse as it set into the Pacific ocean.

However around 10-11pm I went outside to get some stills of the moon from my backyard and got setup just in time to snap off a dozen shutter clicks before a nasty thick cloud cover came rolling in from the west.

I assumed this was the same fog and overcast clouds blowing in from the ocean that had blanketed all the coastal cities I wanted to shoot from. I went back inside to the disappointing weather update that indeed Santa Cruz was becoming cloud covered, not only ruining my plans of catching the moon descending into the ocean but also meaning I might miss the eclipse all together if everywhere within a 2 hour drive was going to be overtaken by thick overcast skies :(

I spent the next 2 hours searching for webcams in various cities like Santa Cruz and San Jose and checking satellite predictions for the 1-6am time frame of Saturday morning, all with very bad news that everywhere from north of San Francisco to south of Monterey and even as far east as Gilroy would be covered in overcast skies during the early morning hours. I honestly wanted to cry but remembered a friends suggestion that I go up Mt. Hamilton which overlooks San Jose and the surrounding Santa Clara county areas.

I started up the Google Earth app, multiple tabs of Google maps and weatherunderground and began to search for potential spots that would get me above the cloud cover that was rolling over the entire Bay Area. I knew it would be bad to go all the way up to Lick Obeservatory since drivers headlights interfere with observation there but also figured that going all the way up would be overkill. Thankfully wunderground.com gives great detailed stats on cloud conditions for each particular area it reports on, down to the individual communities and neighborhoods where weather stations are. I could see that in my area of far south San Jose that the cloud cover was at 1200ft above ground level and combined with the info that area of San Jose was 200ft above sea level I was able to calculate that I needed to be above 1400ft or about 430meters above sea level. Using Google Earth to find CA-130E/Mt Hamilton road I was able to locate several places around 600+meters above sea level that would point me in the right direction and hopefully be above the cloud cover to see at least some of the eclipse if not the peak moment.

I emailed myself directions to my phone and also printed directions and double checked that all my gear was in order and ready to go. I made and ate a tasty sandwich so I would have energy for what was to be a long night/morning. Then headed off to the eastern hills of San Jose hoping for a night of successful partial lunar eclipse shooting...

Ok time for a blogging break, full details about the eclipse in my next post :)

Pre-Eclipse Agony

Ugh, I'm so anxious about tomorrow night's eclipse. Especially since there is cloud cover tonight and has been that way for the past week. Last week was clear and beautiful. This is definitely part of the love/hate relationship I have with lunar photography. I can plan and scout ideal locations as much as I want but it doesn't really matter if nature decides to blow a storm system in. I was planning on getting some great shots of the receding eclipse as it descends into into the Pacific but now I think I'll be lucky if I get ONE shot of the eclipse at it's peak.

To emphasize my point take this evening as an example. Today the moon rose in San Jose at an azimuth of 122° which is the EXACT same azimuth that it will rise tomorrow. I went to my favorite secret moonrise shooting location to get a bearing on where it would appear over the horizon but was greeted with a WALL of cloud cover that looked nice from a 'photographing clouds just before sunset' perspective but what I wanted was a clear view of the moon bursting over the horizon.


*For reference this shot was taken @ 50mm on my 50-500mm Bigma*

See the building at the lower left? The moon was supposed to come up over that area, and technically it already had when I took this pic, but was completely shrouded by clouds. The glowing dot toward the middle right of the image among the clouds is a plane approaching San Jose Airport. I stayed and waited for an hour with no success. Even more heartbreaking was the fact that to the west there was no cloud cover on the horizon, all the clouds were higher in the sky.

I will try again tomorrow but without having an exact visual cue of where to aim my lens I'll be going on rough estimates provided by GPS pointers in my phone. It was important to have an exact reference point because tomorrow I wanted to use my 1000mm lens to capture the moon coming over the horizon which would have been a first in my nearly 3 years of shooting the moon. There is so little room for error with the 1000mm lens, just 1/4° degree on each side of the moon. While each month there is often a point when the moon rises in the same spot on successive days it RARELY happens with full moon conditions, and is even less rare with a full moon that will be eclipsed later that evening. But such are the woes of being a nature photographer. I'm sure 1000 other photographers world wide had carefully planned shots ruined due to cloud cover today, and I'm sure it will happen to many others and myself in the future.

Trying to remain positive I'm definitely glad that tomorrow nights eclipse won't be a TOTAL eclipse, just a partial. That means the moon should cast enough light to shine through moderate cloud cover. I certainly have enough experience shooting gibbous and even crescent moons in a wide range of cloud conditions but I still feel nervous about tomorrow night.

As I write this every location within an hour drive of San Jose is forecast to have overcast or partially cloudy conditions. But that is 26 or so hours away from now. I guess I should just sit back and wait to see what nature gives me.

But I still have every finger and toe crossed that San Jose/Santa Cruz fog doesn't roll in until after sunrise. I won't even waste prayers on fog free conditions in SF, I know better than to ask for miracles. Please cross your fingers and toes with me :)