On December 21st 2010 a Solstice Lunar Eclipse occurred at 1:40am that was visible to the USA. This was a quite rare event. According to NASA a lunar eclipse occurred on the same date as the winter solstice only once before, in 1638. Thankfully we will not have to wait another 372 years to see the next winter solstice lunar eclipse which will occur on December 21, 2094.
I have tried before to photograph various eclipses without much success. Being at night in the winter in Nebraska it can frequently be cloudy or just too cold to go out at 2am to take a few photographs. This morning was different. It was reliantly warm, 28F with no wind and clear. Before going to bed I set my alarm to get up and snap a few photos. I am lucky because my street has very few street lamps and my neighbor’s Christmas lights were off by the time the eclipse was occurring, because of this I sat right out side my front door to take the photographs below.
To capture these photos I used my Canon 7D in manual mode, Sigma 70-200 F 2.8, Manfrotto tripod, 3rd party remote. I turned off automatic focus because I was trying to focus on such a small area of the sky. I used Live view to frame the shot because it was easier to see at this angle and I was able to magnify the image 10x to get the focus tack sharp. This really worked well with a combination of apertures, shutter speeds and low ISO settings. Enjoy my photos below.
Visit my Flickr Stream for more of my photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eos_liquidretro/
If you want to know more about this eclipse NASA has a great webpage about it: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/17dec_solsticeeclipse/
Other photos from around the world can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/21/lunar-eclipse-2010-photos_n_799618.html#212892