Tej Dyal
Super Blood Wolf Moon Lunar Eclipse Timelapse (44 secs)
On the night of 21st January 2019, the moon was eclipsed by our Earth's shadow.
It happened to also be a "super moon", a slang term indicating the moon is closest to Earth in its orbit. A full moon in January is referred to as a Wolf Moon.
Hence why this event was termed a Super Blood Wolf Moon!
A fellow amateur astronomer colleague and I, had to literally escape a huge bank of clouds that was sweeping over England by driving down to South East of England. A lovely b&b just outside Rye (The Hare & Hounds) with an open field accommodated us at short notice. We enjoyed, observed and shot the eclipse for nearly four hours until that very cloud bank we were running away from finally caught up with us just after the eclipse ended. Hoorah!
It was freezing cold at -4deg, but we had our warm b&b hut to retreat to at regular intervals.
What has taken me by surprise as I assembled this timelapse was seeing the blood moon travel through the starfield and occulting several stars. Wasn't prepared for such a lovely effect as one can't perceive that motion in real time.
The totality lasted an incredibly long one hour. Whilst the umbra-Totality-umbra was nearly 4 hours.
Thanks for watching, I hope enjoyed it. If you are interested in how I captured and assembled this timelapse, then I give you all the details below.
The song is "To the Great Beyond" by the awesome Stellardrone. You can buy their music (at any price you wish) here:
stellardrone.bandcamp.com/track/to-the-great-beyond
Location:
couple of miles outside Rye, UK
Hare & Hounds B&B/Campsite
Lovely B&B, with an open field that is a campsite in summer. Stayed in a "shepherds hut" in the field. Website:
Lunar TImelapse
Capture details:
Camera: Canon EOS 650D tethered to a Dell Ultrabook XPS13 laptop
Capture software: Canon EOS Utilities
Lens/Telescope: Skywatcher Equinox Pro 80 APO (500mm focal length, 80mm aperture)
Mount: Nexstar 8SE Goto Alt Az Computerised mount. (interestingly, an Alt Az tracking keeps the moon in the same orientation whereas with an equatorial, the moon would be rotating)
Focussed using EOS Utilities Live View 10X magnification on laptop screen. Focussed on Moon craters.
Obstacle: Unable to level tripod due to broken leg so moon is shifting all over the frame.
Timelapse details:
Real time shoot: From 03:41am to 7:23am.
Total duration: 3hrs 42mins
Frames: 2425
Interval between frames: 5 seconds
Frames Per Second: 60
Duration of whole timelapse: 41 sec
ISO and aperture setting are varied due to the natural changing conditions of the eclipse, manually adjusted at several stages.
Post Processing:
1.Adobe Bridge
Filtered out bad frames, batch renaming sequence of RAW files for importing as a timelapse
2. Camera Raw
Smoothed out exposures.
Increase clarity and saturation
Converted to Jpegs
3. Adobe After Effects
Used motion stabiliser tracking tool to keep moon centred all the way through the timelapse video. Essential in my case as my tripod leg was broken so could not keep it level, thus my computerised tracking mount could not track the moon smoothly and was moving all over the frame. So I manually ensured camera mount was still keeping it in view. You will notice in my timelapse that the edge of the frame sometimes creep into the video all the way near the moon, that's how bad the tracking was.
Added soundtrack, title and credits.
Super Blood Wolf Moon Lunar Eclipse Timelapse (44 secs)
On the night of 21st January 2019, the moon was eclipsed by our Earth's shadow.
It happened to also be a "super moon", a slang term indicating the moon is closest to Earth in its orbit. A full moon in January is referred to as a Wolf Moon.
Hence why this event was termed a Super Blood Wolf Moon!
A fellow amateur astronomer colleague and I, had to literally escape a huge bank of clouds that was sweeping over England by driving down to South East of England. A lovely b&b just outside Rye (The Hare & Hounds) with an open field accommodated us at short notice. We enjoyed, observed and shot the eclipse for nearly four hours until that very cloud bank we were running away from finally caught up with us just after the eclipse ended. Hoorah!
It was freezing cold at -4deg, but we had our warm b&b hut to retreat to at regular intervals.
What has taken me by surprise as I assembled this timelapse was seeing the blood moon travel through the starfield and occulting several stars. Wasn't prepared for such a lovely effect as one can't perceive that motion in real time.
The totality lasted an incredibly long one hour. Whilst the umbra-Totality-umbra was nearly 4 hours.
Thanks for watching, I hope enjoyed it. If you are interested in how I captured and assembled this timelapse, then I give you all the details below.
The song is "To the Great Beyond" by the awesome Stellardrone. You can buy their music (at any price you wish) here:
stellardrone.bandcamp.com/track/to-the-great-beyond
Location:
couple of miles outside Rye, UK
Hare & Hounds B&B/Campsite
Lovely B&B, with an open field that is a campsite in summer. Stayed in a "shepherds hut" in the field. Website:
Lunar TImelapse
Capture details:
Camera: Canon EOS 650D tethered to a Dell Ultrabook XPS13 laptop
Capture software: Canon EOS Utilities
Lens/Telescope: Skywatcher Equinox Pro 80 APO (500mm focal length, 80mm aperture)
Mount: Nexstar 8SE Goto Alt Az Computerised mount. (interestingly, an Alt Az tracking keeps the moon in the same orientation whereas with an equatorial, the moon would be rotating)
Focussed using EOS Utilities Live View 10X magnification on laptop screen. Focussed on Moon craters.
Obstacle: Unable to level tripod due to broken leg so moon is shifting all over the frame.
Timelapse details:
Real time shoot: From 03:41am to 7:23am.
Total duration: 3hrs 42mins
Frames: 2425
Interval between frames: 5 seconds
Frames Per Second: 60
Duration of whole timelapse: 41 sec
ISO and aperture setting are varied due to the natural changing conditions of the eclipse, manually adjusted at several stages.
Post Processing:
1.Adobe Bridge
Filtered out bad frames, batch renaming sequence of RAW files for importing as a timelapse
2. Camera Raw
Smoothed out exposures.
Increase clarity and saturation
Converted to Jpegs
3. Adobe After Effects
Used motion stabiliser tracking tool to keep moon centred all the way through the timelapse video. Essential in my case as my tripod leg was broken so could not keep it level, thus my computerised tracking mount could not track the moon smoothly and was moving all over the frame. So I manually ensured camera mount was still keeping it in view. You will notice in my timelapse that the edge of the frame sometimes creep into the video all the way near the moon, that's how bad the tracking was.
Added soundtrack, title and credits.