I wasn't sure the eclipse would even be visible in my area, but a winter storm cleared out just in time... leaving behind icy roads and wind chills below -10˚F. I hauled my Astro-Tech 115EDT telescope out to the local observatory and setup on the frozen tundra for three hours. There were still large clouds passing through, but enough breaks for photography.
This is a single RAW photo processed three times– once normally, a darker version to recover highlight detail, and a much brighter version to bring out the background stars. The surface detail was sharpened with a combination of RAW dehaze and clarity, a duplicate layer converted to grayscale in NIK Silver Efex (High Structure Harsh) and set to luminance at 40% opacity, and a High Pass layer in overlay mode. I boosted the vibrance and maybe a touch of saturation, then rotated the image 90˚ to correct the angle.
WOW! Nice to finally displace some old photos on my profile, and this is the third entry out of my last four to do that. To address a couple of the comments– yes, a little more space around the moon would have been nice, but rotating the image limited me to the short side of the frame. Also, yes, the moon is very red, but that's the actual color with a custom white balance set for accuracy. THIS is what the original looked like straight out of the camera without any edits.
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Place: 1 out of 28 Avg (all users): 7.6071 Avg (participants): 7.2500 Avg (non-participants): 7.7500 Views since voting: 2135 Views during voting: 152 Votes: 56 Comments: 11 Favorites: 0
I think I would prefer this with a bit more space around the moon, but nonetheless, in my top two, and a very fine entry. Bumping. Coming back for another view and bumping again - my pick for Blue. The level of detail and identifiable features is really impressive. I still would have liked a little more space, and it does seem just a tad over-saturated, but a thoroughly interesting entry.
One thing that always amazes me, although I know it and it is quite obvious, is the different view we get from differing latitudes. For us, Tycho is closer to SW rather than S.
My choice for the Blue. One heck of a telephoto lens! Perfect exposure, color, sharpness, size and timing. I like that you can see the stars and there is essentially no noise to be seen. One more element would have made this picture unique.... if you had captured the meteor collision on the surface that was reported in the scientific journals during the eclipse! Is this you Shannon?
Lunar Totality and Starfield
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