Lightning and a Lunar Eclipse

[Phil Hart]

the ASV held it's xmas star party to coincide with the lunar eclipse. so you can blame us for the bad weather :-).

it was truly bleak conditions.. we got dumped on in the afternoon just after i arrived and light rain with thunder and lightning (generally fairly distant though) in the evening. barely saw the moon until right on the end of totality. don't know how i managed to get focussed jumping from one star to the next as each disappeared cloud before i got it right. what a hobby!

http://philhart.com/content/lightning-and-lunar-eclipse-10th-december-2012

timelapse here: http://philhart.smugmug.com/Astronomy/Stars-in-Motion/10317254_vDcCRM#1626086574_NDhJDC3

camera got rained on but the raindrops and condensation don't show up too bad until the end.

cheers
Phil

[iceman]

Nice work Phil! You were lucky to see anything with those clouds!

The smugmug video still doesn't work for me, but the embedded one on your site works fine.

How did you make the movement go up and then down in your timelapse?

[Ross G]

Great work Phil.

Looks great.

Ross.

[Phil Hart]

Does the video work if you right-click on it, choose settings and deselect 'hardware acceleration'?

You should have come to the presentation at AAIC.. i described all Fred's secrets in what i now (thanks to Sid) call the Hart Attack Vandergraph Generator. It's a motorised Alt-Az mount with a controller that Fred built. There's several commercial alternatives.. lookup 'timelapse motion control'.

The generator (with an upgrade hopefully!) will be on its way to the Yukon in Canada with me on the 20th January for eight weeks of photographing and timelapsing the aurora.. here's hoping that's not all clouded out!

cheers
Phil