CraigBILL

I knew ahead of time that there was going to be a total lunar eclipse on the 15th of April, 2014. The challenge was to plan out a composition - and you only have one chance to get it right. I also wanted to shoot it as a panoramic because I have never seen one created that way. So I found a couple landscapes that would do well along the Texas/New Mexico border - the same place where my popular photograph was taken, “Tempest”. Since this was to be a still time lapse photographic project, I could not mess up the time frame exposures. Its not like the moon can be rewound. But it does move slow enough that I could get all the lunar event - weather permitting. The eclipse started about 11pm that evening and end about 4:30am. Even though i was a little cold, the skies were clear and wind low - perfect for rounds of exposures. By adjusting the camera settings throughout the lunar event, I was able to capture the eclipse in detail as it made its trip up into the night sky. The background star field was photographed during the total part of the eclipse. The brightest star is actually Mars, and the other close by is the bright star, Spica. On the left sky you can spot the rising constellation, Scorpio.