The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Total eclipse of the moon

The weather in Chicago cleared up enough that we got a great view of the total lunar eclipse last night:

For comparison, here is the full moon when Earth doesn't get in the way:

Note that it's a lot harder to photograph the moon when it's eclipsed. The full moon reflects 9% of the light falling on it, or about half as much as a standard gray card or green grass. So when shooting the moon, the correct exposure is surprisingly fast: about 1/250 at f/5.6 at ISO 100. Shooting the eclipse last night, I used 1/10 at f/5.6 at ISO-25600. And a tripod.

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