Lunar Eclipse

The

On the night of Sunday 27th to Monday 28th September 2015 a total lunar eclipse coincided with a "Supermoon" (a full Moon at the same time as the Moon being at its closest point to the Earth). With some adaptations to our scheduling software, we captured the following images.




A normal if a little blurred view of the Moon just before the eclipse:

J277751 / Cluster cam / 50ms / ND3 / 00:30 UTC

Just under an hour later the Earth's shadow was covering about half of the Moon:

J277755 / Cluster cam / 100ms / ND3 / 01:21 UTC

Ten minutes later:

J277756 / Cluster cam / 100ms / ND3 / 01:30 UTC

By 2am UTC, a tiny amount of the Moon was still lit, as seen by our main telescope:

J277655 / Galaxy cam / 50ms / Colour / 02:00 UTC

Using the same telescope observation, but different settings in the viewer it is possible to see detail in the part of the Moon in shadow. The bottom left is the now way overexposed part of the Moon still in sunlight.

J277655 / Galaxy cam / 50ms / Colour / 02:00 UTC

This next observation is a fun one to play with in the viewer, even though the tiny part still illuminated by the sun has overexposed in the camera. No one set of settings does it justice; it is best to slowly move the slider up and down in the viewer to see the effect.

J277691 / Cluster cam / 50ms / Colour / 02:00 UTC

At 2:01 the eclipse is nearly total:

J277764 / Cluster cam / 100ms / ND3 / 2:01 UTC

By 2:20 UTC the eclipse is total and our telescope is capturing some strange and rare images:

J277657 / Galaxy cam / 50ms / Colour / 02:20 UTC

Cluster camera is also capturing excellent colours:

J277771 / Cluster cam / 200ms / Colour / 02:21 UTC

These are just a few of the images taken of the Moon that night by the BRT. See what you can find in the archive!