See you on the dark side of the moon

Last night the Earth, Moon and Sun decided to get together in honor of my 31st B-day in the form of a total lunar eclipse. I thought I had researched it well enough in advance, but I was off by an hour — good thing I went out to my car a little after 6 right as the moon was first making it's appearance over the horizon in Ilwaco. I shot the phases of the eclipse for the following 2 hours and made a composite photograph from 11 of the pix I took. Click the pic to see it in more detail.

I used a Nikon D2X and 300mm f2.8 lens, coupled with a 2X teleconverter, mounted on my biggest tripod. Most of the shots as the eclipse were taking place had an exposure somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/40th of a second at F8. However, when the full eclipse was happening it went down to around 1/2 of a second at F5.6.
The neighborhood was pretty active with folks and their kids coming out to check it out. Most folks returning every 20 minutes or so to snap a few pix and then head back inside, as it was pretty chilly last night. This was the first time I had ever watched an eclipse, let a lone photograph one. Your next chance to take one in won't be until 2010.

-DKM