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.
The End.
