Sunday’s Lunar Eclipse Recap!
It’s summer in the southern hemisphere and Bruno Yporti, in Londrina, State of Paraná, Brazil, had great weather for imaging last Sunday’s Total Lunar Eclipse of the “Supermoon” over the Americas. At his private, roll-off roof, “Ophiuchus Observatory”, he readied his Tele Vue-85 APO refractor with Tele Vue 2x Powermate and Canon 6D DSLR on an Atlas EQ-G mount for the event. The sky was clear, with almost no wind, when he took the above single exposure — about 8-minutes after mid-totality. In this phase of the eclipse, the Moon was illuminated by the refracted light skimming along the entire circumference of the Earth. The deep-red light bathing the Moon is what we see at sunrise and sunset on the horizon.
The mass media heavily promoted the January 20/21, 2019 Total Lunar Eclipse as the “Super Blood Wolf Moon” due to the confluence of the Moon being close to Earth (hence “Super”), the anticipation of the Moon turning red when eclipsed (“Blood” colored), and this being the first full-Moon of the year (the “Wolf Moon” in North America).
Plummeting temperatures in the mid-Atlantic region didn’t stop hardy eclipse watchers and imagers. Dan Ward told us it was “bitterly cold in Northern Virginia at 12°F with steady winds and a -9°F chill factor”. But it didn’t stop him pulling out his Tele Vue-85 APO refractor and 2x Powermate to image the event. He tells us:
The Tele Vue-85 and 2x Powermate gave the scale I wanted for this eclipse. In the past, I’ve used a TV101 or a Pronto; but the Tele Vue-85 was the right choice for these conditions.
His image at totality above speaks for itself.
Low temperatures were also visiting Winston-Salem, NC when Sandy Shepherd took a series of eclipse images (below) with his Tele Vue-85 and Nikon D500 camera. Mounted on a Tele Vue Tele-Pod mount (right), it made for a very portable setup.He was rewarded with an image set that showed the start, middle, and total phases of the eclipse.
Further south, outside of Commerce Texas, cold air was gripping Texas A&M Observatory, where Physics Major Cristo Sanchez setup a Tele Vue-NP127is Nagler-Petzval APO refractor. Conditions were good despite the temperature in the 30s (°F). With a DSLR camera on the scope, he was able to capture this striking series of lunar eclipse images. The partial phase images show lunar craters and maria in high contrast with the final image showing the “blood-red” Moon.
About Tele Vue APO Refractors
Our, fine, small APO refractors offer levels of portability, versatility, field of view, day/night viewing, CCD imaging, digiscoping etc. that large instruments can’t manage. And because APO refractors produce images essentially free of color fringing, and have no central obscuration, both low and high power views have the highest contrast.
Every Tele Vue refractor can give at least a 3° field (six Moon diameters wide). Tele Vue refractors resolve to “Dawes Limit”, easily permitting 60x per inch of aperture for superb high-power viewing when atmospheric “seeing” permits. Our imaging system (“is”) Nagler-Petzval APO refractors (Tele Vue-NP101is and NP127is) retain exemplary wide field and planetary visual capability while adding features to make imaging easier and more flexible.
Read an overview on Tele Vue APO refractors on our website (mobile site).
