Photoshop

Japanese Lantern Moon!

This was my first time imaging a lunar eclipse. The beginning was horrible. Thanks to clouds, the moonrise with complete eclipsed episode was not visible. Gradually the sky cleared up and I could see an eclipsed moon! I gathered data as much I could for this image. I had no prior experience and things went all over the place.

Japanese Lantern effect, or the turquoise/blue band on the moon can be seen during eclipses. Earth's atmosphere scatters more blue than red and we see objects more red when the light passes through our atmosphere (remember, sunset and sunrises are red!). However, the upper atmosphere does the opposite. It scatters more red, hence the blue band on the border of earth's shadow.

For the final image, I blended five images of different exposures to create a high dynamic range image. Luckily, Uranus was also barely visible in the field of view (to the upper right of the moon) along with a star, HD 18357 (below uranus).

Equipment: Nikon D5600, Sigma 150-600c, ioptron Skyguider pro

Exif: f/6.3, ISO 800, 600mm, five exposures blended (10 seconds, 4 seconds, 1/3 second, 1/13 second, 1/100 second)

Processing: Photoshop

Location: Kolkata, India