97% Lunar Eclipse

Image Details:

A Lunar Eclipse occurs when the Moon’s inclination matches the Earth-Sun plane during a Full Moon, enabling the Moon to pass through all or a portion of Earth’s shadow. When this happens during New Moon, we observe a Solar Eclipse instead. Most times the Moon’s inclination is not in this plane, meaning Full Moons usually pass somewhere above or below Earth’s shadow by some distance. As these variations in inclination take time, this often means if the Moon is in the plane of Earth’s shadow, any kind of eclipse is often accompanied by another within a 2 week period. In this case, while the Eclipse captured here occurred on 19 November 2021, a brief Solar Eclipse will be visible on 4 December 2021 - over Antarctica.

Why the Red Color? You can thank our atmosphere for that. While our airless Moon produces a sharp shadow blocking the Sun during a Solar Eclipse, the air around us diffracts sunlight onto the Moon during a Lunar Eclipse. As this light is being diffracted around the twilight edges of Earth (from the perspective of the Moon), it would be fair to describe Lunar Eclipses as the Earth shining an entire planet’s worth of sunrises and sunsets onto our neighbor - hopefully someday we can experience it from the Moon instead of the Earth.

Equipment:

• Celestron C8 SCT + Reducer (205mm Aperture, 1366mm Focal Length, F/6.3)

• Astromodified Canon T3i

• NexStar Alt/Az Computerized Mount

Exposures:

• 40 x 1/100 second, ISO 1600

• 75 x 1/10 second, ISO 1600

• 40 x 1/2 second, ISO 1600

Misc Details:

• Processing Software: PixInsight, Photoshop

• Taken from East Wichita