This week was the Total Lunar Eclipse, and wow—it did not disappoint! I’d been excited for this event for a while, and I couldn’t believe it when the skies stayed clear. It feels like its been non-stop clouds since November.
I decided to just watch from my backyard instead of driving out to a darker spot. Even though my place is a Bortle 7 zone, lunar and planetary photography still turns out pretty decent. I set up my 8-inch Dobsonian and used my phone mount right at the eyepiece. Been so long since I pulled this scope out. I missed using it! Spent some time earlier in the evening practicing and tweaking the focus to get it as sharp as possible. Make sure that auto focus is turned off on your phone and adjust with the scope’s focus.
The giant tree in my backyard was giving me heart palpitations as the moon passed behind it, but luckily it had reappeared on the other side as the eclipse began. I put my phone camera on the Pro setting and used the settings of ISO 80, F1.8, 1/750 s for the first part of the eclipse. Once it was towards the total eclipse, my settings were ISO 1600, F1.8 and 1/6 s. I have no clue if these are even remotely what they should have been at but I just changed them around until I liked the look. The ISO seemed pretty high and the pics were pretty noisy. I would look into changing that for sure next time. When the eclipse started, I took photos every 15 minutes to capture the whole process. Afterward, I put together a collage with my favorite shots to show how it all went down.
I didn’t crawl into bed until around 4 a.m., but honestly, totally worth it! Definitely a very cool event! Glad I got to see this one since the Solar Eclipse was nothing but clouds for me.
Starry Skies 
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