This is just to let everyone who might be interested that there is a total lunar eclipse coming up on the night of Dec 20 (morning of Dec 21) It will be visible to some of eastern Asia, all of North America, and some of western Europe. It is supposed to start at 1:33 AM (EST) or 10:33 PM (PST) and it should be visible for over three hours, so this should be a great time to see an eclipse if the weather is not too bad where you live

It's probably going to rain on me, but I plan on taking my camera out and trying to get some pictures. This is the first time I've tried taking pictures of an eclipse, does anyone have any advice? I'll be using my point and shoot, not a DSLR, but it does have A/S/M controls

More information is available here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20101217/sc_space/amazingspect acletotallunareclipsemondaynight

And more technical info here:

http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display .php?pic=total-lunar-eclipse-chart-101207-02.jpg%20&cap

over east-Central U.S it is visible at 3:30 on tuesday morning. the only thing is, weather here will probably not let us see it. still good to know!

Yeah, i think i'm going to get rained on pretty hard on Monday night  but i really want to try taking some photos of it

speaking of, I tried to get a shot of the moon less than a degree away from Jupiter, but I couldn't get it, it was way to blurry.

Was it a handheld shot? or do you have a tripod - they REALLY help for astrophotography!! Don't know where i would be without one (and mine is a P.O.S. too!)

Digicams have gone down in price so much, you can probably get a decent deal now on one that's better than mine....my camera was expensive when new, but its around 7 years old now, only 4 megapixel. When you do buy one, look for one with manual controls for things like shutter speed, aperture, F-stop, etc, (usually something like A/S/M mode like mine has) that way it gives you much better control over what you're doing than a simple point-and-shoot.... it might cost a little bit more, but IMO it's worth it  (or even better yet get a DSLR, but they cost an arm and a leg!)

Thanks for sharing this Brian! Hopefully it stops raining here long enough for me to see it.

Well, it didn't work out as well as i had hoped, the rain let up a little, but the clouds were intermittent all night long. There would be breaks for a couple of minutes and i'd rush to set my camera up..... but before i was ready the clouds would roll back in  Around 12:15 PST we hopped in the car and drove to the beach, and for about five minutes it was completely dry and clear, and absolutely beautiful!! ..... then the "Mordor" clouds came back again.

So i got a few pictures, taken around 15 or twenty minutes after totality i think, they are not very sharp but they do show the red coloring fairly well. These are two of the best (and yeah they're not that great - at least there are two more eclipses coming next year )


Full Wallpaper View: 640x479


Full Wallpaper View: 640x479

So did anyone else see a good show? Or was it raining on you? Did anyone get any pictures?

I got up at 2:30 to look out and see a cloudy sky. oh well, I only have to wait 372 more years to see another lunar eclipse on the winter solstice!