I was thinking that I might not be able to see the lunar eclipse – there had been a fair amount of cloud when I went out at lunchtime.  Thankfully, while I was walking Sparky the dog, I could see that most of the eastern sky was clear!  I had seen details that the moon would rise during the eclipse and would be low in the sky, so I aimed to get up high – I didn’t have to go far (a mile or so) but I could have stayed even closer to home as I saw the moon, in eclipse and reasonably high in the sky, as I drove out of the village.

Anyway, took quite a few pictures, but it is so difficult to take in-focus, vibration-free shots – most were OK, but not quite what I was hoping for.  I was shooting with an Opteka f/8 500mm reflector lens – manually focused (the X-E1 has a zoom-in mode to help with focusing, which is extremely useful) – they looked good on the rear screen, not so sharp once processed.  More practice required with this camera – previously, with a DSLR, I would have triggered the shutter after setting ‘mirror up’ mode, but this is a mirror-less camera – will look into this further!

I did enjoy seeing this planetary spectacle – the next solar event is a transit of Mercury across the sun on 11th November 2019 – knowing our weather, we’re unlikely to see that in the UK – there are a couple of penumbral (outer shadow) lunar eclipses in but the moon will not dim by much (needs to be an umbral lunar eclipse as seen yesterday) – the next one visible from the UK is 16th May 2022…that will be a total lunar eclipse (blood moon) – totality is achieved at 03:30 UTC until 04:54 UTC – that’s going to be a late night/early morning to catch that one!

Update: Looking at the next Lunar Eclipse in more detail, moonset is at 05:10 BST (04:10 UTC), so in the UK, we will not be able to see the end of this eclipse

#2019 #UK #Cotswolds #LunarEclipse #LunarEclipse2019 #Moon

Technical details:

Fuji X-E1; 500mm(Opteka f/8 500mm; manual focus); 1/15s@f8; ISO800 – tripod – post-processing in Lightroom – DSCF10631907169738