Different kind of Lunar-eclipse-observing (an attempt to make an indirectly Lunar Eclipse observing)

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Sep 29

2015

by Johannes Stübler

Due to cloudy weather, there was no chance to make an observation of this year's Super-Moon-eclipse. At first the local weatherforecast in the north of our hometown Linz/AUSTRIA wasn't so bad .......

........ but when we arrived at our observing location we had following scenery:

So what could  we do ? Hope dies last and we decided to stay to wait for some holes in the clouds ..... they didn't come :-(

In the meantime we used a DSLR, using a 8mm lens and took some pictures showing the cloudy sky during the whole time. So we decided to make a kind of indirectly eclipse observing :-)

In the meantime we had enough coffee and something to eat - just to survive ;-)

Following a short overview (5 second shots, ISO1600) about "our eclipse-observing-night" ... you see, it became dark ....

really- there was an eclipse !    :-)

But not enough we decided to show this Lunar Eclipse process in a diagram - therefore, using Astroart, we analyzed all pictures to following statistic datas and put the results to an Excelsheet to get an diagram of the Lunar Eclipse-process

VOALA, ..... here it is :-)

Here again you clearly can see, how it became darker and brighter during the night. Pict 1 & 2 are before the eclipse, so they are too bright. In the 2nd diagramm (a flatter display) the eclipse starts at picture 3. Caused by changes in the clouds there are some fluctuations - anyway it worked. Of course at the end of the eclipse the moon was near our horizon and so we got different numeric values at the end - not so high as at the beginning when the position of the moon was much higher above the clouds.

So this was my/our  first indirectly observed Lunar Eclipse - a ver y different observing - but nevertheless, believe me, we had much fun :-)

Best regards

Joe

J O H A N N E S   S T U E B L E R
Ambassador and National Coordinator AUSTRIA
of Astronomers Without Borders - AWB
http://www.astronomerswithoutborders.org
TWAN-Austria event coordinator
http://www.twanight.org
National Organizer Sidewalk Astronomers
http://www.sidewalkastronomers.us
Member of LAG - Astronomical Society of Linz
http://www.sternwarte.at
Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society
http://www.ras.org.uk/
Charter member of A4E - Astronomy for Education
http://www.virtuelleschule.at/a4e
Associate of the IAU Division C Commission 55
http://iau.org/administration/membership/associate/15957/