Sometimes you need a lunar eclipse

Sometimes you need a lunar eclipse to be reminded that we live on an amazing big sphere hurtling through space.   It’s not a wild fantasy story.    

And I guess my eyes are pretty good to see something that is a quarter million miles away. 

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Lunar Eclipse – February 21, 2008 – St. Louis, Missouri

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 The sun is beginning to emerge from Earth’s shadow here, semi-framed by a terrestrial holly tree. 

 [I took the first shot with a Canon S1Is (a 3.2 mega pixel camera with a 10x optical zoom), the second shot with a Canon A700 (a 6 mega pixel camera with a 6x optical zoom).  Both of these are consumer grade cameras.  I used a tripod for both, bracketing the exposures in a variety of ways–I deleted most of the photos I took.  It’s amazing how just a tiny bit of vibration will ruin long exposure zoomed photos.  I ended up using the “timer” (time-delay) setting so my finger wouldn’t shake the cameras].

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Avatar of Dan Klarmann
    Dan Klarmann

    Vibration was my main problem when I took these shots with my 2005 Panasonic Lumix at about the same time as you took these.

    I've loved the 2s delay for night shots since I got my first digital camera. I do need a sturdier tripod, and should have turned off the anti-vibration motor in the lens.

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