Updated 7 Nov 2004

Joe Roberts Astrophotography

27 October 2004 Lunar Eclipse

This page contains photos of the total lunar eclipse of 27 October 2004. Photos below were taken with a digital camera (Olympus C3030Z) through a Criterion Dynascope 6" F8 Newtonian reflector. A 32mm Televue Plossl eyepiece was used for Afocal photography. The camera lens F stop was set at 2.8 for the entire event, the zoom was all the way out (wide). I also took slide (film) photos using a Celestron CG-11 telescope, those photos are out at the processor at time of writing, I will add them when they come in). The sky cleared around the time of sunset, however clouds rolled in around the time of mid eclipse. I was still able to shoot photos between breaks in the clouds. The second half of the eclipse was nearly totally clouded out (it was clear by dawn however). The photos below are the best of about 230 photos taken. NOTE: You might want to Calibrate Your Monitor in order to best view the images on this site.

Calibration Bar

Events for this eclipse (all times EDT):


9:01pm EDT Exposure: 1/800 second

Some penumbral shading visible


9:13pm EDT Exposure: 1/800 second

Heavy penumbral shading visible, partial eclipse 1 minute away


9:24pm EDT Exposure: 1/500 second


9:37pm EDT Exposure: 1/320 second


9:41pm Exposure: 1/200 second


9:55pm Exposure: 1/60 second


10:04pm Exposure: 1/50 second


10:14pm Exposure: 1/5 second


10:14pm Exposure: 1/2 second


10:18pm Exposure: 2 seconds


10:23pm Exposure: 4 seconds

Total eclipse officially begins


10:30pm Exposure: 4 seconds


10:33pm Exposure: 3 seconds


10:45pm Exposure: 8 seconds


10:49pm Exposure: 10 seconds


10:55pm Exposure: 6 seconds


10:59pm Exposure: 4 seconds

Moon just about at mid eclipse (clouds were interfering with photography at this point).

Shortly after this photo was taken the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years...


Slide (film) Photos

The photo below was taken using Kodak 200 speed slide film (the type that is sold at Wal Mart). The slide was scanned at 2000 dpi optical and processing was done (mostly to remove dust marks) using PhotoShop. The exposure below was probably around 5 seconds (I did not keep good records on exposures, I was bracketing from about 2 seconds to about 15 seconds). The telescope was a Celestron CG-11 using an F6.3 reducer for an effective focal length of 1765mm (about 35x compared to a 50mm standard lens on a film based SLR).


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