Lonely girl in eclipse time
While the Moon was eclipsed…
After nervous 680km long drive across the north island of New Zealand for some chances of good weather me and my sister Katerina almost incredibly succeded. We found a small field-road next to the main road to Takatiki, where the clouds miraculously dissipated just couple minutes after beginning of totality and we could be witnessed by absolutely stunning views in southern starry sky during the eclipse on 15th April 2014. Perfect timing of the clouds allowed us to see just the total eclipse – the partial eclipse before and after was lost due to clouds. Thanks to the dark sky of this region was visible also zodiacal bridge and Gegenschein just in the same position like the Moon with Spica an Mars. And small bonus – a green color on horizon is very faint airglow. I decided to capture a portrait of this unique moment. Used Canon 6D, Sigma 15 mm, f3,5, ISO 8000, 13×20 s, panorama, tripod.
Simply witnessed
When I finished capturing the panoramas, I also tried to make some expositions for stacking. And here is the result. Image “Simply weitnessed” is stacked from 52x15s expositions, ISO 10 000; used also Canon 6D and Sigma 15 mm, set f3,5, tripod.
Eclipsed Moon, Spica and Mars
The last image shows impressive conjunction of the eclipsed Moon with bright star Spica (bluish one) and brighter red planet Mars, which was just one week after its oposition with the Sun. Again we can enjoy same view to eclipsed Moon and bright Mars just in less then 4 years. On 27th July 2018 will occur the longest total lunar eclipse in this century and luckily in same day also the biggest oposition of Mars after 15 years. For this image used Canon 6D and Tamron 70-300 mm @ 130 mm, f4, ISO 8000, 1/4 s, darkframes applied, tripod.
