In preparation of LPI’s event at the George Observatory, I took our Celestron 8-inch telescope home to make sure it was in good working order. While I had it out on my patio, I connected my Canon 7D and got a few nice pictures of the first quarter moon. The field of view is small enough that it takes at least two photos, stitched together, to show the entire surface of the moon.

Close-up of the terminator (line between day and night), Mare Serenitatus (top dark area), Mare Tranquilitatus (middle dark area), and Mare Crisium (small dark area on the bottom right)

I had gotten an adapter to connect my camera to the Celestron 8-inch telescope the LPI Education group has, but I didn’t take into account how long the adapter was and how high the moon would be in the sky during the eclipse.  The adapter kept hitting the stand and I couldn’t even attach my camera, so I had to rig it where the tripod legs of the telescope were sticking out to the side of the telescope and my camera tripod was shoved underneath the telescope stand holding it up.  This way the entire telescope was leaning and my camera was free of the telescope stand.  Because it was rigged and leaning, I couldn’t use the tracking of the telescope, so I had to move it manually as the Moon traveled across the sky during the night, which made it much more of an interactive event than I had planned.

Another issue was the cloud cover.  We had spotty clouds that got thicker and thicker as the night went on.  By the time the Moon was in totality and bright red, there were a few intermittent holes in the clouds to view it, and that was it.  My field of view in the telescope was so small that it took four to six pictures to cover the entire surface of the Moon, and there just wasn’t enough time in the small holes in the clouds to get the shots during totality.  So, I gave up using the telescope and just used the long end of my 70-300mm lens, so the red Moon pictures aren’t as high resolution, but they still came out nicely.

Totality!

The Milky Way

Star trails and the lights from boats and oil rigs in the Gulf

First light appears on a cloudtop while several stars are still visible

Saturn and the lights in the 18-inch telescope’s dome (I had it on a long exposure from the previous shot and didn’t realize it as I tried to take a picture of Saturn through the telescope eyepiece.  Once I realized my mistake, I moved the camera away to change the exposure, making the curved lines and blurs in the picture.  I think it makes a neat abstract image.)

Star trails and the 18-inch telescope dome.  The bright one in the middle of the frame is Venus setting in the west.  The top of the dome is lit from the full Moon rising behind us!

The limb of the Moon through an 8-inch telescope

Em and Juliane trained in the classroom and the pool at Diver’s Depot before heading down for some open water training at Blue Lagoon in Huntsville, Texas

We camped one night before diving more the next day.  Thunderstorms down in northeast Houston lit up the sky

Two newly-certified divers and their divemaster (me!)