The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes Joel 2:31
Pi day blood moon! 4 photo HDR image merged in Lightroom. I thought it was going to be clouded over but about 20 minutes before totality the clouds cleared! I got a great view of it through my Nikon D800 and Nikon 200-500mm f5.6 as well as my 20 x 80 astronomy binoculars!
Observing/imaging from my apartment balcony
Some information on yesterday’s early morning blood moon from NASA’s APOD:
On March 14 the Moon was Full. In an appropriate celebration of Pi day, that put the Moon 3.14 radians (180 degrees) in ecliptic longitude from the Sun in planet Earth’s sky. As a bonus for fans of Pi and the night sky, on that date the Moon also passed directly through Earth’s umbral shadow in a total lunar eclipse. In clear skies, the colors of an eclipsed Moon can be vivid. Reflecting the deeply reddened sunlight scattered into Earth’s shadow.
As I’ve been going deeper down the rabbit hole and learning more advance astrophotography techniques, I’ve found myself wanting more focal length in my imaging train than my 60mm 360mm focal length AT60ED.
In my browsing the classifieds on the web I came across an Astro-Tech AT130EDT at a decent price. After chatting a bit with the owner and some bartering, I went home with the Astro-Tech but also a C8, a 6 inch Classical Cassegrain from GSO, a planetary and DSLR cameras and a box of spare parts and finders. I’ve always wanted to try planetary and lunar imaging, but didn’t have the right scope/camera combo for it. Now I am all equipped to give it a go once the weather clears.
Astro-Tech AT130EDT on ZWO AM3 with ASI533MC Pro
The jewel of the lot, the AT130EDT, was the first to get a first light. I pointed it at M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, which is my favorite planetary nebula in the sky. A quick 4 hours of integration and a quick edit the next morning created this image:
4 hours of M27 with AT130EDT, ASI533MC Pro at 101 gain and -10° C, and Optolong L-Extreme Duoband filter
I am happy with the image that came out. I think for a quick session and processing the result is good. I think it is a bit soft due to some dew that build up on the objective lens. I did put a dew heater on but I forgot to turn on the DC port on my ASIAIR to send power to the dew heater, so towards the end of the session, there was a very slight amount of dew forming on the objective.
For comparison here is M27 taken with my 60mm refractor from a bortle 1 sky this last summer:
50% crop of M27 taken with AT60ED, ASI533MC Pro at 101 gain and -10° C, and Optolong L-Extreme Duoband filter
I’d like to try this object again through the AT130EDT as well as trying it with the Celestron C8 I picked up in the lot.
I know the AT130EDT is slightly over mounted on the ZWO AM3, but with a counterweight and putting the mount in “Heavy Duty Mode” I was guiding at 0.7” arc seconds. I am planning on mounting it on a SkyWatcher EQ6r-Pro in the future, once the funds for it are available.
