A total lunar eclipse on a cloudy night
A total lunar eclipse on a cloudy night
Less than 1 minute
Minutes
After one entire week of clear sky (very rare for my location), the weather forecast was discouraging for the eclipse night (May 15-16, 2022).
Despite the clouds, I carefully planned my setup by chosing the telescope, the camera, and even planned a live streaming on YouTube.
As expected, I had a rough journey with the weather, but there were some clear breaks in the clouds around the time of the totality. I was able to capture a few frames between 10:55pm and 11:35pm with my 80mm APO refractor and a dedicated CMOS camera (ZWO ASI533MC).
It seemed a dark eclipse compared with the last one, maybe because of the eruption in the Tongan archipelago (Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai) on 20 December 2021.
The images below are a stacked image from the beginning of the totality and an animated gif that shows the progress of the eclipse.
Lesson I learned last night: Never give up!
Date: 2022-05-15
Location: Richmond Hill (ON)
Scope: Explore Scientific ED80CF
Mount: Celestron AVX
Camera: ASI533MC PRO
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Software: FireCapture, AS!3 (30% images stacked from multiple 10 second videos), Registax, GIMP, PIPP (for the animated gif).
I was also live streaming the eclipse. Below you can see the YouTube link.
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Spoiler alert … planet season is coming soon, so stay tuned!
