Brisbane Lunar Eclipse timelapse, in absentia

[von Tom]

In an effort to record at least some of the eclipse this morning (starting work at 5am :( ) I decided to set up the Canon 550D on an Astrotrac, put on a 200mm lens with 1.4x teleconverter, and take shots at 32 second intervals. I left the metering on minus 5 stops, set f/7.1 in Av mode and ket ISO at 100.

I didn't have time to align the Astrotrac properly and framed the image at the bottom right to account for the drift that was apparent from right to left, also allowing for the relative movement of the Moon up the frame.

The results surprised me both in the exposure and the framing - the Moon drifted off the top left of the frame just as it dipped behind the roofline, and the exposue was about as good as I could normally manage manually. times from 4:40am to 5:55am

Here is a link to the video:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vontom/5838681134/in/photostream

and attached is a pic of the setup and some of the photos taken when I wasn't there.

Thanks for looking,

Tom

[Red Nine]

Impressive results as usual Tom - especially in absence of being able to adjust exposure times etc. Well done!

[Liz]

Excellent job Tom, and not even there, impressive. :thumbsup:

[michaellxv]

Well done Tom. That came out really good.

[firstlight]

Jealous... Don't even have to be there to take great shots! Well done

[von Tom]

Thanks guys. At work, as an ATC, I was tempted to offer a couple of vectors to an inbound V Australia flight East of Sydney, so that the passengers could see the eclipse. :)