Lunar Total Eclipse
Taken by Mark Seibold on October 8, 2014 @ Planning on photographing this eclipse for many weeks of summer-like weather here in the Portland Oregon region, low and beholden, on the night of the eclipse approach, clouds begin to show. As it goes in Oregon we as local natives know all about clouds and rain and how no weather forecast will ever be truthful here. So with my 60 years of knowledge in sky watching, I knew well enough to wait till the last minutes to decide where to go in avoidance of the clouds rolling in. The Columbia River Gorge customarily has a high air movement, so that was the final choice- to the Vista House at Crown Point. Possibly one of the most picturesque Kodak Moment places in all of the Nation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Point_(Oregon) As I struggled to arrive exactly as eclipse totality began and taking my professional photographer friend, I struggled to set up in usual fashion as I do all over the city of Portland for years of providing sidewalk astronomy for the public. And this was no exception. My 27 year old Dobsonian 10.1 inch f/4.5 Coulter Odyssey telescope still performs like new and has become my photographic extension to the moon. I set up a now three year old Sony NEX5 digital camera and point it closely into a 32mm Super Plossl eyepiece. This produces a nice image to the APSC light sensor. It is not the comparable image that some more serious astro-photographers exercise, but it produced some pleasing images all last summer on Mount Tabor with the public and those images may be viewed in all of the usual social sites under my name. For this eclipse event I took over 150 images over a one and a half hour period. Changing from the telescope to my usual 180 degree Vista House panoramas back and forth several times, until the final images after totality ended, produced some beautiful sequences- I make composites such as this first image showing three latter phases of the eclipse with a large 180 degree panorama of the Vista House at Crown Point Oregon with the the Columbia River Gorge at far right extending a hundred miles in this dark scene. Much of the public left as soon as the moon passed the beginning of totality- I could only assume that they thought it was all over as the moon darkened and seemed to disappear. Too bad that they did not come over to observe it in the telescope as I allowed several passersby to see the details of the changing phases for over an hour and on the back of my camera screen. The Sony NEX5 has good potential in low light but at 800 ISO, with compromising exposure values, some inevitable digital noise is present on the dark red-orange shadowed side of the moon. Uranus was accidentally captured in the same frame exposures as the moon, although I knew the planet was visually close, I did not expect it in the eyepiece paired with the moon and no less through high thin clouds. So several exposures show the planet here. The final panorama of several that I took in 12 ~ 15 exposures stitched with Microsoft ICE, was the best as a surprise halo formed, still allowing the moons final phase after totality ended and Uranus was again captured accidentally in the latent unprocessed exposure. A nice closing portent to inspire future observing. - Mark Seibold, Portland-Sandy-Corbett, Oregon

Camera Used: Unavailable Unavailable Exposure Time: Unavailable Aperture: Unavailable ISO: Unavailable Date Taken: 2014:10:12 13:06:28