The Penn Stater Magazine

Nice Shot of the Lunar Eclipse

December 22, 2010 at 1:51 pm Tina Hay 1 comment

I briefly considered trying to photograph the lunar eclipse that took place early Tuesday morning, but, well, the operative word there is “briefly.” Once I weighed the fun and challenge of shooting a colorful moon against the fact that it involved getting up at 2:30 a.m. and standing outside in 15-degree weather, the choice was clear: I’d much rather be in my warm bed.

I did actually wake up around 2:30 a.m., for no apparent reason, and decided to at least go take a look. So I went outside in my nightshirt, slippers, and a ski jacket and looked up into the night sky, and saw … clouds. It had been clear in State College when I went to bed, but the sky apparently had since clouded over. So I went back to bed.

But luckily for you, there are photographers who are a lot more patient and persevering than I am. And my favorite local shooter, Andy Colwell, apparently stayed up for the whole thing, waiting along Blue Course Drive with his tripod and hoping for a break in the clouds. He finally got one around 3:20 a.m. and shot the photo you see above.

(You really should click on it to see it larger; I especially love the fact that you can see some stars in the shot.)

Andy used a Nikon D300 and a 200mm lens plus a 1.4 teleconverter; he made a three-second exposure at f6.3 at 1600 ISO. It was so windy that he had to use his Jeep to shield the tripod.

We’ve featured Andy’s great photographic talents on our blog before—some examples are here, here, and here. We’re talking about running a photo essay of his work in our March-April issue. Stay tuned.

And if any of you photography fans have a shot or two from the lunar eclipse, let me know, and we might post them here on the blog.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: Photography, State College. Tags: Andy Colwell, lunar eclipse, photographing the eclipse.