Blue Moon Partial Eclipse

My take on last night's event:

www.astroshot.com/Lunar/2009-31-12-Lunar-Eclipse02.jpg

Canon 400D; Canon 100-400mm L IS USM Lens.

Some fine detail there Michael.

I was wondering - in any of the shots of this partial eclipse - would there be any value in pushing the colour (I've seen colour being pushed to expose areas of high titanium, iron whatever) to see if any information can be inferred from the changing colour across the Earth's shadow.

I've seen this done on lunar images before - but not during parial eclipse.

E.g.,

autostarsuite.net/photos/tking2097/picture19715.aspx

I think Anthony has also done this of the lunar disc (but memory could be failing me) - but as I say I'm unaware of it being done of an image of partial eclipse.

Might be an interesting exercise.


Mark

Nice capture Michael.
Those Canon L lenses are great.
I thought at first glance it was through a scope.

mjc wrote:

would there be any value in pushing the colour (I've seen colour being pushed to expose areas of high titanium, iron whatever) to see if any information can be inferred from the changing colour across the Earth's shadow.

Mark,

I've done this before a few times alright.
However, when the Moon is not at full, the light changes angle and the colours seem to change.
I've noticed this before when processing first quarter moon images, but I don't necessarily understand why the colour appears to shift.
I might drop an e-mail to Chuck and find out why.

In this case, the light is shining through Earth's atmosphere, so it would have yet another effect.

www.astroshot.com/Lunar/2009-31-12-Lunar-Eclipse-Colour.jpg

Regards,

Michael.

Gorgeous shot, very nice indeed.


Deirdre Kelleghan
Vice Char IFAS
Outreach IFAS
www.irishastronomy.org/
www.deirdrekelleghan.com/
twitter.com/skysketcher

michaeloconnell wrote:

However, when the Moon is not at full, the light changes angle and the colours seem to change.
I've noticed this before when processing first quarter moon images, but I don't necessarily understand why the colour appears to shift.
I might drop an e-mail to Chuck and find out why.

In this case, the light is shining through Earth's atmosphere, so it would have yet another effect.

Got a reply back from Chuck re this:

I imagine the color shift is because of the reduced amount of light near the terminator or at the umbra. And at the terminator the brightness variation due to topography - shadow and bright reflection - overwhelm the very subtle color differences due to albedo. That, and shadowing where information is lost, is why the color images are usually taken near full Moon conditions.

Interesting.

Michael.