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Who decides on these silly names for the moon, anyway? Julio just started a thread and posted a photo but he didn't mention the penumbral eclipse. Instead of walking on his thread I'll start this new one given that I shot the moon last night with the express intent of capturing the effect of the eclipse.

But, what did I capture? I can't really say. The penumbra was only going to darken some portion of the disc near the top. Is the top of the moon in this image, taken at the apex of the eclipse (12:29am EST) noticeably darker than it is supposed to be?



As usual, prime focus using a Pentax K-3II on a Meade MTS-SN6. This one happened to be 1/400th of a second at ISO 100 but I shot with other exposure times too (that sucker was bright).

I will answer my own question. Expert lunar observers have told me that yes, the top of the disc in this image is noticeably darker than it would normally be. But the change was so gradual I noticed nothing during the actual event. I still have to wonder why I decided it was worth losing sleep over.

Glad you did. Nice job. I wanted to do the same as I hoped that the eclipse would give a bit more contrast and detail than a regular full moon. The original plan was to start with the K-1, 150-450 with 1.4x teleconverter, and end with a couple shots with the Q7. Was unable to do so, so took a picture of a garden ornament lit by a solar luminary with my Q7 and posted it in the main Q image thread.


The garden ornament turned out nice, but really wanted an image like yours!