I seriously started to doubt my sanity when the alarm clock went off at 2:45am. I found myself pulling on layer after layer of clothing before dragging my tired carcass outside to join the telescope in the crystal clear 4ºC January weather. The moon looks like countless other full moons I’ve seen before. Maybe a little brighter than usual, but maybe that’s just my imagination.
I was starting to doubt that I’d got the right day, when the show finally started. “Looks like somebody’s taken a bite out of the moon”, I said and smiled to myself. Time to get to those pictures! In between pictures I took occasional looks through my binoculars, but what really fascinated me was the environment. The crisp shadows were slowly dissolving, and the stars were beginning to show! A few times I couldn’t help removing the camera and looking at M42, or a cluster or two. Don’t get much chance for that during a full moon!
Turtle! 22/01/2000
I took 2 rolls of 24 exposure Kodak Gold 400ASA film, shot with a Canon AE-1. Exposures during partial were between 125th/s and 15th/s. I used 4 to 10 second exposures during totality. All were taken at prime focus on my LX50 with Meade’s Variable Tele-Extender. 21 decent pictures out of 48 exposures. Better than I expected! 🙂
From the good set of images I was able to put together this rather jumpy (and tiny!) animated gif of the eclipse using an ancient copy of MS GIF Animator… (Now there’s a piece of software that never in my life thought I was going to use!)
Added 24/03/00: Just got the Kodak PhotoCD back from the photo lab, and wow what a difference!!! Click on the thumbnails below for 640×480 at 256 color versions. They are all taken from the same negative.
Scanned with and Epson FilmScan 200 and edited in PhotoShop. I sharpened the image, and darkened the background.
Original Kodak PhotoCD image.
Kodak PhotoCD edited in PhotoShop. Specks and scratches removed, light unsharp filter applied, and I fiddled with the color and contrast mainly to darken the sky.