Supermoon eclipse

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Well hello friends. I'm at home tonight. Out in this direction here you can see the full moon. You can't see it very well in this wide angle but it's a supermoon tonight and we have a lunar eclipse as you can see on the screen here. We've already got the penumbra most of the way across it, which is the outer shadow of the eclipse. Parts of the moon that are already in the penumbra, from there they can see the Earth partially covering the sun. It is very difficult to see the penumbral shadow. The umbral shadow will be starting to cross the moon very soon as you can see in this time lapse here. This is what is happening, with the penumbra and umbra hitting. The shadow is going to sweep over and it is just going to make a total eclipse as the Earth's shadow just covers the moon for a few minutes. Then the shadow will start moving away and take off to the north. Then the penumbra will follow. We are at an early stage of the eclipse at the moment with not much to see. So I've got my Canon 6D here on a tripod with my lens set up for 600 millimetres. This is an old camera running on aperture priority. I've set a wide aperture of 6.3 - as wide as it can get on this lens. I'm running at 2000 ISO which may make it a little bit grainy, but hopefully not too much. This is producing a shutter speed of about 1:1000 of a second. That may be a little too short but it will overcome any shake which could blur the moon. There is quite a bit of cloud around, so I'm crossing my fingers the moon will stay clear most of the time. At one stage it looked like I was going to miss the eclipse altogether but it now looks like I will still be able to get it. It's just a matter of angling the tripod to point straight to the moon and getting some shots. I'll add some of these shots to this video. It's a fairly clear late autumn night tonight. As the photos will hopefully show, this should be quite an interesting eclipse. No hiking tonight, just out here on the porch watching the eclipse. At this latitude at 27 degrees south, the moon is going to rise very high. It will be pretty fascinating so long as the clouds stay away. This is also the supermoon, the part of the orbit where the moon is closest to the Earth. You would think most orbits are circular, but they are actually elliptical. That means the moon is sometimes further away and sometimes closer. Tonight it's at it closest making it 40% brighter than at its furtherest. Because the shadow is only just going to cover the moon, I am expecting to see the red moon as you'd usually get in a total lunar eclipse but it will be whitish on the bottom and darkish red at the top, so it won't be the best eclipse. I'll see what I can do though with the photography. I would normally run the camera on manual but tonight I've had to run it on AV aperture priority setting as this is quite an old camera and I've had to glue this back in and in doing so I'm now not able to move the dial to other settings. I nearly alway have it on aperture priority. To compensate for this I've set the aperture compensation right down to minus 3 stops. This will make the images too dark by three stops. I do this because the moon is extremely bright. If I didn't apply the 3 stop compensation the moon will come out far too bright, almost looking like the sun. All the detail would wash out. To prevent this I've whacked down the compensation to make the moon a lot darker than it normally appears. The pictures (I'll show you one) has the definition and you can even see the penumbra on that side of it now. This still is a little too bright, so I'll change the aperture down a little.

OK it's 7:43 now and it is very close to the start of the umbral eclipse. There is a little bit of cloud around. I can see the shadow starting to come over it (without the camera) so it's time to take a few more pictures of it. I got that just in time and now the cloud's coming over again, but it will clear soon. It looks like I'll be taking pictures as the cloud clears. This is part of the challenge of photographing eclipses. You need to prepare in advance. I use timeanddate.com. It gives all the details of when the eclipse is going to happen, when it's going to start and finish. It shows the whole sequence which I find very handy. It does help you prepare for the eclipse. It's just a matter of whether the sky stays clear. Tonight's the 26th of May, so it will have well and truly passed before this video is published. You can search by whereever your location is in the world. Obviously I'm in Brisbane, Australia, so if I go further down the page, it shows all the upcoming eclipses (visible from here). There's a partial eclipse on the 19th of November. It's nearly total but not quite. There's another total eclipse in November next year. There's a partial solar eclipse coming after that and so on. So you can look up all the eclipses that are coming up in your part of the world here at dateandtime.com. It looks like the moon's almost completely disappeared now but it will come back again and obviously I will be photographing it again.

The moon's still quite bright so I don't even need the tripod at the moment and I'm still getting some very good results. As you can see here the shadow is really going over now. The part of the moon that is in shadow is from where any observer would see the sun has completely gone behind the Earth. So the view from up there would be really amazing. Viewed from Earth, the moon and sun appear about the same diameter, the moon slightly more, so the moon only just covers the sun, so that's why the shadow of the solar eclipses viewed from down here appear really small. But from the moon, because the Earth is far bigger than the moon, the shadow of totality appears far bigger. Tonight is one of those nights where the entire surface of the moon will be completely covered in the shadow of the Earth. Looking from anywhere on this side of the moon it's going to look really amazing. They will be able to see all the lights of this side of Earth. They will see all the lights of Australia but most of what they will see is the blackness of the Pacific Ocean, appearing perhaps slightly reddish similar to what we are seeing with the moon. Towards the northern side of Earth the moon will see all of Asia - South East Asia to China and Japan. There will be a huge amount of lights through that. They will also just be able to see the west coast of North America. There will be a big ring of night lights around the edge of the world as the sun will soon be rising on eastern North America. From the moon they will see a few spots of light from here in Australia and New Zealand and probably a little bit in Africa as well. The view from the moon isn't quite as spectacular as it would be if the other side of the world were facing it. Here in Australia we are getting the full spectacle tonight. People on the other side of the world won't see this at all. There are a few total lunar eclipses that have happened recently which we have completely missed on this side of the world, so we're lucky to have it today. The shadow is moving across a bit more, so I'm going to get a few more pictures.

Here's the latest shots, perhaps a bit hard to see. I haven't changed any of the settings but the exposure time at the start of the eclipse was 1:2000 second, and now it's down to 1:1250 second. The moon has already lost half of its brightness. You can see the Earth's shadow creeping over it.

The moon's gone behind a cloud now, so I can talk a bit more. You're probably wondering what you need to do to prepare. Firstly you need to find out when the next lunar eclipse is. The first thing you need is your smart phone with the details of the eclipse. Then you need a decent camera. Unfortunately phone cameras just don't cut it at all - you'll just get a bright spot in the sky. You need a good DSLR (or mirrorless) - I'm using a Canon 6D, but it doesn't have to be a full frame. You can use a crop frame one as well. The main thing you need is a good lens such as a 600mm lens. You will need at least 400mm to get a descent shot at the moon like the shots I'm getting tonight. Get a good to professional grade camera body which you can use on manual settings. The rest of the sky is so bright that the moon will be far too bright in shots if done with automatic settings. You'll lose all your details. You just need manual settings and you should practice a lot during any night when the moon is out. Take pictures of the moon and experiment. I find exposure time around 1:500 second and open the aperture as wide as you can. With this lens I can get a maximum f-stop of 6.3. If you have a really big and expensive lens, you should be able to get that down even further. Try and keep the ISO as low as possible but in these conditions you have to have at least 2000. You'll therefore need a really good camera that will handle an ISO of 2000 without being too grainy as you get with higher ISO values. It's just a matter of experimenting and taking a lot of pictures of the moon at different phases. Especially try some close to the new moon where there's just a thin crescent (and not much light). Then when the next eclipse happens you'll be all ready for it. I think the cloud is starting to go away now so I'll take some more pictures.

The shadow is now nearly half way across and it is getting significantly darker now. The shutter speed of 1:2000 second at the start of the eclipse is now down to 1:400 second and I'll need to start increasing the ISO now. It is interesting the shadow is pointing due south now and the light side of the moon is pointing due north now. Usually the shadow points away from the sun either to the east or west. Yet right now it's pointing south. It would be interesting to see the animals that navigate by the moon would be getting very lost now with the direction of the shadow on the moon. It is almost suggesting the sun is due north but that's not the case at all. My favourite time for photographing the moon is when it is half full, a crescent or gibbous moon when it's partly dark. Then you see all the craters very clearly near the shadow zone. But tonight with the sun shining directly onto the moon, you don't see much definition at all. The photo isn't showing much contrast or texture within the moon. I'm having to enhance the contrast quite a bit in the photos to bring out the shading, but you don't get much shade at all. There's almost no shading around the craters at all. I find it best to photograph when the moon is in one of its phases.

OK we're just over half an hour out from total eclipse and it is getting quite a bit dimmer. On the camera I can just make out the red dark parts. You probably won't see it on the gopro but it's all starting to happen now. The way the sunlight shines around the Earth the red light tends to bend around a bit more which will cause the dark shadow of the moon to appear red. There's too much glare from the shiny part of the moon at the moment, but when it does go into total eclipse it will appear red. It will be very dim so I'm going to have to really crank up the settings. The darkness will appear a bright red colour, not the grey you would normally expect on the moon due to the red light bending around the atmosphere of Earth much better than the other frequencies. Most of the light hitting the moon during the eclipse is red. It's going to happen pretty soon, so time to get some more picture taken.

It is getting very dark now. There's not much bright moon left. I can now clearly see the redness of the dark patch. There is another 20 minutes before it does go to total darkness. I've just looked it up. The diameter of the umbra (the dark shadow) is about 9000 kilometres. The diameter of the penumbra is about 16,000 kilometres. The diameter of the Earth is 12,600 kilometres. Because of the diameter of the sun, some parts of the sunlight spins around but other parts don't. That explains the two parts of the shadow. The umbra is about the size of the Pacific Ocean or the length of Eurasia. The shadow of totality on Earth during a solar eclipse would only be about a hundred kilometres wide in a very good eclipse. It is a lot darker now and there are a lot more stars out now. I've heard a few dogs a few blocks away going crazy understandably, and you can probably hear the yowies going as well. Those mythical creatures a lot of people believe in - you can hear one now. It is very dark now so it's time for a bit more photography. Amazingly the sky's cleared up. It got quite cloudy before, but it seems to have cleared but there is another cloud coming over. I just have to cross my fingers and hope it clears during the 20 minutes of totality to get some good shots.

It has just reached totality. It is a very dark greyish red. As mentioned before there is quite a bit of light on one side but over the next few minutes it will be as good as it gets. I've got to put this back on the tripod and take quite a few more shots and then keep going and watch the north facing light bend around to the east to the bottom of the moon, then it will get light again. Very interesting.

The shadow of the moon is just starting to clear now and a little bit of light is showing. An interesting fact - the sunny side of the moon is about 100 degrees Celcius and the dark side of the moon is about -170 degrees. There is such an extreme variation because the moon doesn't have an atmosphere. So it will be interesting to see how much the temperature has dropped over the surface up there with the eclipse. I imagine the temperature drop would have been a few tens of degrees, perhaps 50 or 60 degrees difference.