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Pre-eclipsed Moon Rising video and more images are coming!

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During the maximum of the eclipse the Moon was so dark, that I had to increase the exposure time to 20 seconds, whilie still keeping the ISO at 400. My TAL 100 refracting telescope on it's original equatorial mount was a perfect tool for the job.

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Missed the eclipse or would like just to go back in time for a moment and see it again? Try my 3D Eclipse image. The full-screen version is here.

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W. Coetzer has sent us this beautiful image from the farm in Waterberg, Limpopo, The eclipsed Moon with stars of Milky Way in the background - this is what we couldn't have seen from the big city.

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Carol Botha writes from the Cape: Most guys in the Cape gave up on the eclipse but I braved the rain wind, lightning and cold. I begged the clouds to go away. They listened and just past eight the Moon came out to play. A few minutes before twelve, I could not strain my neck to focus any longer. The Moon was virtually overhead. I krept into bed and could feel my heart pounding. I could not believe I had witnessed another total eclipse.

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Kos Coronaios conducted an Eclipse viewing event on behalf of the Soutpansberg Astronomy Club in Louis Trichardt, Limpopo, where they had a number of telescopes set-up as well as big screen with real time video stream by AstroCam .

Absolutely beautiful. The cold weather did not stop enthusiasts in Louis Trichardt joining the Soutpansberg Astronomy Club to see the evening's show. A 10 inch F4 Newtonian Reflector with the tried and tested Foton AstroCam attached was used to project the Moon's image on the screen while a 8 inch F8 was used for visual observing. Popular on the evening was a spotting scope giving a wider field of view than the telescopes' and Sarah and I were kept busy having to manually track the Moon.

The show began right on time and shortly after 20:20 the bottom part of the Moon started darkening as the Earth' shadow began taking a chunk away. By the time half the Moon was in shadow we had more visitors arriving from town as they tried to get away from the light pollution. The portion of the Moon's surface that was already in shadow was beginning to turn a dark-reddish colour and could easily be seen with the naked-eye, but not from a light polluted site. With the Moon deep in the Earth's shadow, constellations, stars and naked-eye deepsky objects started appearing. We swung one of the telescopes towards Saturn, and while people were taking turns enjoying a view of the planet and some of its moons, the Moon continued to darken. It was a good time to point out some of the constellations that were not visible prior to totality, such as Sagitta, Delphinus, both Southern and Northern Crowns and plenty more.

Temperatures for the evening hovered around the 8 to 10 degree Celsius mark and shortly after maximum eclipse people started the journey home. I stayed on to watch the shadow withdraw as the landscape was bathed in silver light once more. Magnificent sight and not to be enjoyed from our part of the world again until 27 July 2018. Some of us might not see this one due to age and deteriorating eyesight! There is a total eclipse for our location in 2015 but the Moon will be so low on the horizon in the morning sky and will set before completely moving out of the Earth's shadow, so will not be anything as good as last night's show. The Club would like to thank Jacaranda RMFM the, Zoutpansberger and the Johannesburg Planetarium in helping to promote the event.

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The Full Moon is back to normal, looking like a bright light in my garden, casting shadown on the ground.. It's close to 0 degrees here in Johannesburg and 00:25 SAST and I am ready to go.. Thanks to all for sharing this evening with us!

Before I go, I turned the scope to Saturn, which I will come back to on this website in a week and will tell all about a little Saturn project I've been doing for the past two weeks.

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Well, it's coming to an end, just few more images to go, but we have plenty to work on now. All images published today are single exposure unedited images. As a visitor to our website from Turkey said, "we'll have much more tomorrow"

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During the totality I've tried to take a widefield image of the Scorpio and the Moon below. It would be a nice photo if I was out of town, but with the light pollution here in Johannesburg, this is the best I could do.

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First rays from the sun have touched eastern limb of the Moon, announcing the end of totality! 23:05 SAST As a matter of interest, there were exactly 2000 page visits from the start of the eclipse until now from around the country and abroad. Thank you all for your company! And thanks to Johannesburg Planetarium for providing the link to Astronomical.co.za! Stay tuned till the end!

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Absolutely awesome! Having my favourite drink, from my daugther's Blackbery is coming the most appropriate song - "Fly to the Moon" by South African Parlotones, and the star is occulted by the eclipsed Moon! 22:30 SAST

The Moon is now in total eclipse! With exposure time of several seconds the stars in the backgroundare clearly seen. All images so far are obtained using Canon DSLR at prime focus of a TAL 100mm f10 refractor. 21:40 SAST

Photo below was taken by Margo Rhinehart in Douglasdale. Canon DSLR and 300 mm telephoto lens were used to capture this image

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Orange glow starts showing