Lunar

Total Eclipse

A wider shot of the moon in total eclipse. The orange color comes from the light of sunsets around the circumference of the earth being scattered back onto the face of the moon as orange colored illumination.

Total Eclipse Closeup

This was shot with a Pentax manual focus 400 f/5.6 mounted to my 40D via adapter. The orange color is very dramatic in this view.

The Beginning of The End

The edge of the moon brightens as the moon begins to pass out of the earth's umbra.

Last Sight at First Light

The almost completely eclipsed moon sets behind the mountains as the impending sunrise reddens the snow covered peaks.

Above the Peaks

he partially eclipsed moon heads towards the horizon.

Partial Eclipse

I was able to use a 1000x dimming ND filter in front of my telephoto lens with a 1.4x extender to get an image of the annular eclipse from the Delicate Arch in Arches NP. This was as close to totality as the eclipse reached from our location. Even though the moon is covering a large part of the sun, the amount of dimming was not really noticeable.

Partial Eclipse With Big Sunspot

An extra special treat while we were down in NM shooting the night skies was a partial eclipise. Although the level of totality was not very high (the dimming effect was just noticeable) the presence of one of the largest sunspot clusters in the last 25 years made the event extra special. I was able to capture it handheld using an ND 3.0 filter.

Young Moon

I didn't have much magnification with just a 300mm lens mounted to my astro DSLR, but decided to find the very young moon (2 days old) in the sky while waiting for sunset. I took some still frames, but my best result came once the sun went down and I took a 640x480 crop mode movie and stacked the best frames, to create this shot.