The great 2007 lunar rip off
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007I’m not a compulsive stargazer, but I am fascinated by things celestial. It comes from the days of being a kid brought up in an isolated rural place and the light of the night was the stars. We used to lie on our backs in the grass for hours and fascinate ourselves with the vastness of the universe. I never did get my head around the magnitude of the skys, hence the ongoing interest. I’ve been keeping an eye on this upcoming event for a few weeks. I knew it was the first event like this since 2000 and we could expect the moon to to be lit by some funky shades of red, yellow and orange as scattered sunlight sneaked past the earth. I was a wee bit excited and I got some gear ready to capture the event. I dug out my 400mm lens which hadn’t been used for a few months, plugged the 1.4 extender on to it and connected it all to my 1DsmkII. Not really an astronomers dream setup I know, but I have made some reasonable moon images with this gear in the past and after all, the images aren’t for NASA.
Well, the weather gods weren’t having it! There would be no free show for the folks of Kaikoura tonight, no matter how many times you sneak outside thinking you’ll catch a glimpse and no matter how cold you get in the brisk night air staring into nothing, there will be no seeing the moon tonight. I was a little disappointed I guess, but we live on the fringes of nature here and every image made is a bonus. I’ll wake in the morning and look out my window to a beautiful wild amazing day and anyway I can make some decent photos of this eclipse thing in 2011. At least I got a wee peek.
