I’ve never tried to take photos of the moon before. I don’t know why, I’m quite fascinated by astronomy but I don’t really know a lot about it. I was SO looking forward to the Blood Moon this weekend. I even put a calendar entry in my phone for “Pink Moon” to remind myself. I organised my day around it, getting home in time (on a Saturday night, no less) to set up and get some shots.
The night before, I took some test shots from my driveway. It’s been a rainy and miserable week or so here in Brisbane and it’s been very cloudy and overcast, with rain in the evenings and overnight. My test shots I took with my 60mm (120mm equivalent) lens because I’m in love with it 😉 I should have used my larger zoom lens, but I was just testing and it was about 9pm and spitting rain, so I just stuck with it. Here’s one of the test shots:
The moon is overexposed in order to bring out some detail elsewhere in the image and as such it’s grainy as well. I needed to do some reading!!
Then came the night of the blood moon. I did the required reading in the morning about how to take photos of the moon and I was ready! I went out shopping for the day and got home at about 7:30pm. My phone rang as I was beginning to cook missG’s lamb chop, so I settled in for a 30 minute chat with a good friend.
And I promptly forgot about the moon.
I’ve been watching Game of Thrones from the beginning again, so I curled up on the couch for the evening, watching the Lannisters playing their evil games. I went to bed at about 10pm (which is very early for me) but missG had been home alone all day sleeping so she wanted to play. There were some noises outside on the street as people were walking home and it was then that I remembered the moon!
I put on the 40-150mm zoom lens (up to 300mm equivalent) and went out to see what I could see. I didn’t realise how far the moon moves each day. Its position had moved to directly overhead and the clouds were out in full force, the moon just barely peeking through. I managed to get this shot below, it was my first shot pointing the camera straight up, handheld (I can’t figure out how to make my tripod point my camera straight up LOL). This shot is clouded and all shots after this were too cloud-covered. I think I could see the moon for about 2 minutes in total. This photo is taken before the full eclipse has happened, so I didn’t even get to see the red tint from the sun reflection. It started to rain again after about 20 minutes and the clouds didn’t allow the moon to appear again so I gave up at about 11:30pm and went back to bed.
I wasn’t going to share these photos, because they really aren’t very good, but it was all in the name of experimentation, I can only improve (hopefully)!!
Apparently, I can try again in 2018! I will be ready. But my mum tells me that it’s in January, so we’ll probably have more rain and clouds 😉
Did anyone else have any luck?
x desleyjane
Musings of a Frequent Flying Scientist 
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