Tuesday 21 December 2010

Lunar Eclipse...


An advantage of the last working week of 2010 is that I'm on night shift ~ and today's journey home was underneath the impressive lunar eclipse. Took the opportunity of taking a few photographs prior to my retirement to bed ~ images here are with the 500mm & 1.4 extender, hand held, as the tripod was iced up in the boot of my car.


I'm no expert in this type of thing, but there was some interesting blurb on the BBC website...

"It is the first total lunar eclipse in three years and the first to fall on the Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year - in nearly 400 years.


The Moon is normally illuminated by the Sun. During a total lunar eclipse, the full Moon passes through the shadow created by the Earth blocking the Sun's light".



I didn't photograph the complete eclipse - I guess it would be a blank black canvas!

3 comments:

Stewart said...

And it was bloody cold too!

Unknown said...

Should of stayed on, it turned a deep red, unfortunately there was cloud coverage down here and I missed it.

The Hairy Birder said...

Nice shots!