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geek stuff pictures

Viva the Blood Moon!

Last night, those of us in North America had the chance to witness a total lunar eclipse, which has an end result of our moon getting darkened by the Earth’s shadow and turning kinda red.  It’s pretty awesome.  So for those on the West Coast, the fireworks started around midnight, but I got set up a few hours before that as I wanted to watch the eclipse’s starting point too.

I had discovered yesterday that my new Canon 600 HS point-and-shoot camera has a ridiculous 18x optical zoom and a 72x digital zoom – typically digital zoom is garbage but it isn’t super garbage if you put the camera on a tripod.  Doing that revealed that I could get some perfectly adequate pictures of a full moon!  So with that camera setup, I took a ton of pics of the night sky last night, especially focusing on the moon and a few pictures of Mars.  Without a telescope, my pictures aren’t exactly the clearest, but I’m still pretty excited by what I was able to capture.  Plus, when I pointed the camera’s light sensor at various points, I could get really crazy images.  I’ve also been bitten by the astronomy bug so yes, I ordered myself a telescope and accessories…..be prepared to see hopefully lots more interesting of night sky photos.  Thanks to Ian Irvine for the inadvertent recommendation on how to properly do this!

Here are some highlights of my pics – you can see I’m doing pretty good with just a camera and a tripod – but I wish I had the telescope.  In a few days, I will!

Anyway, I’ve got a ton of pictures below – I’m hoping that I’m able to add a Google Auto-Awesome montage of the photos so it’s more like a slow animation of the eclipse as it’s not exactly a pleasure to look at all these via the photo gallery I’ve got below.  Be warned, there are a LOT of pics to be found here, not all of which are winners….

15-Apr-2014 00:06, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 1 sec, ISO 1600
14-Apr-2014 19:53, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 800
14-Apr-2014 19:54, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 800
 
14-Apr-2014 19:54, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 800
14-Apr-2014 19:54, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.125 sec, ISO 1600
14-Apr-2014 19:55, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.167 sec, ISO 3200
 
14-Apr-2014 19:56, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 500
14-Apr-2014 19:56, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 250
14-Apr-2014 19:56, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 250
 
14-Apr-2014 19:57, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 320
14-Apr-2014 19:57, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 500
14-Apr-2014 19:57, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 500
 
14-Apr-2014 19:58, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 400
14-Apr-2014 19:59, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 400
14-Apr-2014 19:59, Canon Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, 6.9, 81.0mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 125
 

 

2 replies on “Viva the Blood Moon!”

Can’t wait to get the telescope and mess around with what you can see up in the sky. Especially after watching Cosmos, I’m ready for my mind to be blown. I was just bouncing around on your site just now – it’s awesome, toots….I mean, Melody!!! 🙂 Great pics and I love the enthusiasm and drive in your writing.

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