Astroblog: Images from the penumbral eclipse of 11 January 2020

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Images from the penumbral eclipse of 11 January 2020


Moon taken with my Xperia mobile phone at 3:13 am, before the start of the annular eclipse. All images were taken with no digital zoom, f/2. ISO 800, 1/4000 second exposure using infinity to infinity focusing with 20 mm lens and a 4.5" Newtonian scope.	4:07, 20 minutes after the penumbral eclipse has started, note the faint darkening of the Moon (prior to this I had to move my scope and reset up, painful)

4:27, the darkening is now clear in both the telescope and to the unaided eye.	4:48, After an interval with cloud and another shuffle to avoid the moon going behind trees the darkening of the Moon is now clear.

4:59 after another bout of cloud the darkening is even clearer. After this the clouds came over solidly so I gave up 40 minutes before mid eclipse	Simulation of the shadow at mid-eclipse (not so dark in the simulation but give an idea of the positioning).

After the sky being clouded out all day and most of the night when I checked the sky in the morning and it was clear as a bell, so I hastily set up my equipment and started imaging. Because of the low altitude of the Moon there was a lot of interference from the trees, which meant I had to move the telescope a lot and re-adjust the camera (hence big gaps the the coverage). Then cloud started coming over, I did get a fair way into the eclipse before the cloud completely wiped it out, but by the time I gave up the darkening of the Moon was obvious both in camera and by eye.

Unfortunately this is the best and darkest of the penumbral eclipses this year for Australia (although the November penumbral eclipse favours the east coast, it is not very dark).

Labels: astrophotography, eclipse, Moon, penumbral, unaided eye