Penumbral Lunar Eclipse 2013
observed (probably) at Bockfließ, Lower Austria, Austria

(minimum resolution: 800 x 600 - best resolution: 1024 x 768)

On February 25th, 2013 there was a partial eclipse of the moon visible in Austria. This time it was a very subtle phenomenon as most of the earth shadow missed the face of the full moon. The occultation happened only through the penumbral shadow where part of the sunlight is blocked by the earth. Only at the uppermost edge a tiny bit of the moon got completely covered by the shadow of the earth.

I used my standard equipment for sun- and moon-related events, which is my 80 mm f/7.5 ED-refractor extended to 1280 mm focal length with a barlow lens. The flatfield pictures I took to correct the colour bias in my astrophptpgraphy camera were not working properly, so I decided to discard the colour information completely and enhance the effect from the eclipse by dramatically raising the contrast. Different from previous lunar eclipses I was able to capture all of the partial phase in equal intervals that allowed me to generate a movie. Just click at the picture to download and/or watch:

And now for the apologies. I did not post the material earlier because of the embarassment to obviously having lost the information where I actually made my observations.
All I remember is that I drove out somewhere into the vicinity of Vienna, I assume it was Bockfließ. But I regret to be unable to give you further details...

Enjoy the picture and the video and feel free to drop me a line if you would like to comment on it.

Please keep in mind that astrophotography is a hobby that demands a lot of money and even more time and effort. So I have to state that the copyrights for all of these pictures are reserved. In case you'd like to use our pictures for more that just watching them, please send me an e-mail-message and ask for permission.
Thank you.

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