Picture of the week

Blood moon

Lunar eclipse as photographed on 4/14/2014.  During a lunar eclipse, the shadow of the earth prevents direct illumination of the moon by the sun. In this situation, the moon is illuminated from indirect light refracted from the edge of the earth 360 degrees around.  The color is a more reddish color as contributed by the earth's atmosphere, similar to the color one sees at sunset.  Another unusual phenomena with a lunar eclipse is the visibility of the surrounding stars.  Normally when you have a full moon, it is so bright that it obscures the visibility of the adjacent stars.  But due to the relatively low light levels, the stars are still visible.

I photographed this using my Canon 500mm f/4 IS supertelephoto with a Canon 2x mark II teleconverter.  The exposure was at f/8, 1/2 second, at ISO 1600, using a Canon 70D cropped body. Shooting at this shutter speed is the maximum that one can apply and not have visible motion blur.  Given the use of a 2x TC and its 2-stop reduction, the only other option is to crank the ISO level of the camera higher at the trade-off of higher noise for the captured image. 

All content and images are property of Stephen Fischer Photography, copyright 2014.  Last updated: 4/16/2014   ()