2003 Lunar Eclipse
November 8-9

At least two forecasts were in error on November 8. Skies forecast to be
"mostly cloudy" turned out to be "sparkling clear" for most of the evening.

I hauled a couple of cameras up to a clearing above our home in the woods
and picked a spot from which the Moon would be visible from moonrise through
the end of the umbral phases of its eclipse. I periodically photographed the
eastern sky using a Nikon D100 on a fixed tripod to establish the path of the
Moon in the sky, and zeroed in on the Moon itself using a Nikon D1 behind a
5-inch A-P refractor. Here are the results. Moonrise and totality are
single frames from the D1. The composite of the eclipse consists of one
wide-angle view (exposed by the light of the Moon after its eclipse) and several
closeups through the refractor carefully placed along the path of the rising
Moon. (Today's other forecast happily in error? Who else expected my Tennessee
Vols to beat the Miami Hurricanes at Miami?)




Moonrise, Connelly's Springs, NC





Totality.
(4 seconds ISO 200)





The Total Lunar Eclipse of November 8-9, 2003
(The Astronomy Picture of the Day for November 11, 2003.)
Click on the image or on this link for a bigger image and notes.



All images on this page are (c) 2003, David Cortner.
Please get in touch to license high-res files
of these and many other images on this site.

Mail Bonding:
davidcortner@pobox.com

Take me Home!
http://www.davidcortner.com

---

Thanks to Robert J. Vanderbei for pointing out that most of the
"stars" in the image of totality were probably hot pixels. He was
absolutely correct -- they popped out after aggressive stretching of
the background and I was all too happy to think they were real. I've
reprocessed the middle image above to remove hot pixels. Only one point
remains in the small image shown above. It is SAO 93205 (HD 18357).