TUTORIAL : HOW TO EXPOSE THE 360 DEGREES OF THE EARTH’S SHADOW.

Authors: Aldo S. Kleiman and José Luis Sanchez.                                                                                    Photographies: Aldo S. Kleiman, José Luis Sanchez and Shahrin Ahmad.  

                                   

https://www.flickr.com/photos/akleiman           https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqwU5vOIQrN_f3pJxk_pPyQ/videos                                           http://www.geminisaustral.mysite.com/                                                                                 https://www.flickr.com/photos/shahgazer/

Human beings have been watching the Earth’s shadow during lunar eclipses since ancient eras; they could just imagine the complete  shadow during those magic moments; 60 years after entering in the space age, and as far as we know, nothing has changed ; despite huge earthbound observatories and sophisticated ones in orbit, we can just imagine, but not appreciate with our senses, the complete Earth’s shadow; this fact encouraged us to develop a very simple photographic composition method for achieving that; the technique is original; however, let us know please, if someone has ever seen something similar to this project.

First Step (gathering objects).

It is necessary to gather lunar eclipse images with the Moon going across every area of the Earth’s shadow; so, in this case, you’ll see the object passing (successively from right to left and from above to below) through the northern polar area, southern polar area, southern area, equatorial area and northern area:

The images must have been likely captured with different equipments, for that reason, the object diameter, the object brightness and the background brightness have to be matched at this moment.

Second Step (orientating objects).

The shape of the Earth’s shadow projected on each Moon, should allow us to know the area and the tilt of the moon path, nevertheless, we preferred to rotate the objects with the help of charts of each event, taking in account the cardinal points. It is not necessary the use of accurate astrometry, because our goal is to expose the Earth's shadow for an intuitive appreciation, and accurate measurements were not our objective. Then, we are having the Moons (from above to below) through southern, equatorial and northern areas:

And here southern polar and northern polar areas:

Knowing how far a Moon moves in the photo field during a specific time period, for instance between entering and exiting the shadow, can help making the composition, going to the frames during the totality when the stars appear, will permit us to use them as reference, for finding out the Moon’s motion pace.

Third Step (merging objects).

So, every images are merged together now, and the objective is achieved, as you can see as follows:  

It is possible to manage brightness, diameter, rotation and motion of objects in a photo with ordinary  applications for image processing; but specific astronomy apps seem to work better for image merging.   The same steps with long exposed photos and we could achieve the following result:

                                                                                                                                                                        

Additional Information (some curious facts).

1.       The Moon went across every area of the Earth’s shadow in 5 years in our series, fortuitous or pattern?

2.       The Partial lunar Eclipses used in this project were bounded to Total Solar eclipses, and vice versa, the Total Lunar Eclipses to Partial Solar Eclipses.

3.       The Moon passed through the equatorial area of the Earth’s shadow on July 27, 2018; that one was the longest Lunar Eclipse in the century, besides in coincidence with  Mars opposition:     https://flic.kr/p/2iUK6j7

4.       Photo compositions pursuing the Earth’s shadow exposure, had already been posted by the authors previously:                                                                                     https://flic.kr/p/yHUdwR                                                                              https://flic.kr/p/24c4EN4                                                                                https://flic.kr/p/AymWXU                                                                                    https://flic.kr/p/247Jzfx      

5.      Also the animation "Five Acts for a Total Lunar Eclipse" achieves a very intuitive exposure of the Earth's Shadow; find it here:  https://youtu.be/LUHKkmU_jvE                                                               it belongs to the authors’ series “Astromovies for Cloudy Nights”, find it here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqwU5vOIQrN_f3pJxk_pPyQ/videos

6.       The Earth’s shadow can be perceived not only during Lunar Eclipses;  observing satellites, as for instance the ISS, losing brightness in the Earth's penumbra, and disappearing in the umbra, is a very touching event:        https://flic.kr/p/2iSh9WG

7.        And meanwhile waiting the next Lunar Eclipse, let’s take in account that such kind of events are frequent at the Jovian Moons too:                                                                          https://flic.kr/p/ehqSaz                                                                             https://youtu.be/EZOwe4xlj70  

Conclusions.                                                                                                                                                                                                          If Human Beings can survive the global warming, the desertification and the demographic explosion, our descendants will go on watching forever touching Lunar Eclipses, and surely  also appreciating the complete Earth's Shadow thanks to every time better photo compositions. 

The End.