My First Eclipse Poster

[Mike21]

This is the first time I have had my astrogear out for many moons.

I am not yet finished but my eyes are hanging out of my head, 'cause I am still learning PS, but I am keen to post. This is my first "astroposter". I wanna do one of all the planets one day but I'll try walking before running.

The top row is progressive darkening of the Moon as the Earth's shadow crossed in the path of the light usually illuminating the Full Moon. At about the 2/3's point my focus becomes the "dark side of the Moon" and the exposures goes from 1/40th - 1/50th of a second @ ISO 100 with moon filter, to 1 - 2 seconds @ ISO pseudo-6400.

The large images are of 1. the full Moon with no interruption from the Earth's shadow, though interrupted by cloud which thankfully cleared as the spectacle commenced. And 2. the fully shadowed, completely eclipsed Moon.

All in all, I have managed to minimise the degree of cock up I thought I had originally made. The focus is not great in some of the images but I had to shrink the buggery out of it to post it and my faults there are covered too.

Hope you like. I'll add the progressive de-eclipsing of the Moon as soon as I get a chance to finish the poster.

http://i1208.photobucket.com/albums/cc370/speedie11/Finish3000pi.jpg

[jjjnettie]

The first thing that struck me was the range of colour.
It's really very beautiful. :)

[Mike21]

Well thanks for the comment JJJ, I had a squiz at yours too.

I've finished the poster completely now. I added it to the first post.

[zardos123]

very well done, maybe one day i will be this good with photoshop, you should be proud a great result
regards brad:thumbsup:

[ZeroID]

Nice work and excellent shots. Thats got to go up on the wall somewhere. Looks like you got much better skies than I did for sure.

[Inmykombi]

What a great presenatation of your images.

Very nice work indeed Mike.

Geoffro

[Mike21]

Yes, the skies were unbelievable in Newie. The clouds cleared just as it started, I was not able to get a clear shot of the Full Moon before hand which is why the central shot does not match the others, it's a ring-in from past efforts. While I was dragging my rig out onto the deck, I believed that my efforts were going to be in vain.

There was a bit more cloud during the un-eclipsing, but I was able to work around it.

Dew was my biggest problem, that and I got a button stuck on my controller and thought my mount had packed up, so I had to go manual - without "swizzle" sticks too.

Keep bashing with P/S Zardos, fiddling is the only way to learn. You Tube taught me a lot of what I know. I bought a CD by Jerry Lodriguss too, which was really helpful in learning how to use addition and subtraction on layer masks (not that I used the process for this poster). The layer mask process is similar to what Registax does, but more slowly and detailed, good for fewer images. I am no expert, pure novice really. I didn't even know how to open a pallet and make it black for the background a week ago!

Thanks again all, for the comments.

Mick.