Derby and District Astronomical Society

The Total Lunar Eclipse of 3rd-4th March 2007
A Movie by Mike Lancaster

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The following 1.1 MB animated GIF of the total lunar eclipse of the 3rd-4th March 2007 was constructed by Mike Lancaster from over 50 separate images he took of the event. The animation compresses 4 hours of eclipse watching and covers the entire umbral phases from around 21:12 UT for the first frame until 01:13 UT for the last. The inner and darkest part of the Earth's shadow (the umbra) impinged on the Moon's disc at 21:30 UT. Totality lasted for an hour with mid eclipse at 23:21 UT. At 11:58 UT the Moon began to exit the umbral shadow, and cleared it by 01:11. Mike used an Olympus Camedia C4000Z digital camera hand-held at the eyepiece of a Meade LX-90 telescope. A 40 mm super-Plossl eyepiece was used and the camera employed a 7 mm lens. The images cover a variety of exposure times, are mostly at f2.8 and have been scaled down from an original size of 2288 x 1712 pixels. Adobe Photoshop Elements was used to create the animated GIF from the best of around 100 shots of the eclipse.

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