Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Eclipse of the Full Moon Jun 16, 2011 From Okinawa, Japan

                                            FULL MOON PHOTO 3:10AM JUN 16, 2011

Here's a blow by blow account from Okinawa, Japan concerning this month's full moon.

For me, it all started at 7:15PM last night, the 15th of June.  Ryukyu Rusty sent me an instant message, or whatever you call those emails that come through your cell phone.  It said "Lunar Eclipse at 0300".  I replied, he could come by the house and get my 500mm lens.  No way, was I going to be awake at 3AM.

Well, he was so excited about the full moon, he never came by and went with that girl of his to shoot reflections of the full moon over the ocean, somewhere. Hope he got some.

Anyway, I walked back to my office and Googled the full moon Jun 2011 and came across this article in the HUFFINGTON POST.  They were talking about a "moment of totality" and this hasn't happened this good since July of 2000 so, I said "The hell with it".  Then, went home and asked the wife to look outside at 2:30 in the morning and see if she could see the moon.  I told her it was a special event, where the moon turns red.  I'd get out of bed for that. I didn't want to get out of bed if it was so cloudy you couldn't see the moon.

At 2:30AM, I was awakened.  Groan.  "Did you see the moon, I asked her"?  "Yes, she says.  It isn't red".  Groan, gripe, get coffee, put lens in camera, mount everything on a tripod and stumble up the stairs to the roof of the house to see what the moon looked like and there it was.  It didn't look any different than any other full moon I ever saw.  Why am I doing this after only getting 3 hours sleep?  Groan, again.

After shooting about 50 frames of the moon at different camera settings, I called it a night.  I was starting to think Huffington and Rusty were full of crap.  Maybe there was some confusion about the date between when the eclipse takes place over Japan vice the USA. 

So, I groaned some more,  took the big lens off the camera and put all my toys away.  Wide awake, full of mosquito bites and coffee, I decided I might as well take the SD card out of the camera and go to my office, uptown, to download and see how my moon shots turned out.

It's a few blocks walk to get to my office.  I stop at a machine close to the place and grab a few iced coffees to drink while the PCs are doing whatever they do warming up everyday.

Well, just as I turn the last corner, to get to my hangout, the moon appeared.


It looked like this around 4AM.  I watched for awhile, to make sure it wasn't just clouds.  It wasn't clouds.
Sonovagun, the moon was going to have an eclipse at 4AM instead of 3AM.  I was sure.

So, I emailed Rusty's cell phone to let him know it was SHOWTIME !


This photo was taken at 4:11AM using  Pentax K5, Tripod, Cable Release and the Sigma 50-500mm lens.

     It was 4:19AM when I took this shot and I'm still waiting for that "Moment of Totality" to happen.
At 4:39 I took this photo and was starting to feel somewhat totalled but, wasn't sure if it was quite there, yet.  This isn't the way I'm used to getting totalled so, some scientist will have to be the judge on this eclipse of the full moon thingy.


A bunch of clouds rolled in and blocked my view several times so, after I took this shot at 4:45AM I called it a day.  I'm really not sure if I witnessed the totality, or not. 

The other thing I got wondering is what the heck is that thing at about ten o'clock just outside the moon.  Somebody spyin' or did we leave space junk up there awhile back ?


NOTE: THE SIGMA 50-500MM, ONE OF MY FAVORITE LENSES IS AVAILABLE FOR CANON, NIKON, SIGMA, SONY AND PENTAX DSLRS AT ADORAMA CAMERA A COMPANY, I AM PROUD TO SAY, I AM AFFILIATED WITH AS I HAVE HAD SUPERIOR SERVICE IN MY PAST DEALINGS WITH THEM.  THEY DELIVER PROMPTLY.


SEE A 15 SHOT SERIES OF THE LUNAR ECLIPSE HERE

VISIT MY HOMEPAGE FOR THE PHOTO OF THE DAY


4 comments:

Muza-chan said...

Great photos. I wanted to go last night to test my new zoom, but it was raining here...

RyukyuMike said...

Muza-chan,
Thank you. Incredible stubborness, or stupidity is all that keeps me going, sometimes. I'm waiting to see if Ryukyu Rusty made out better than I did. Wind and clouds kept me from getting the kind of shots I had hoped for. But, can't complain. Lots of folks missed out on seeing anything at all.

Ryan said...

I bet you're glad you stayed awake Mike these shots are fantastic. Apparantly some parts of Scotland had an excellent view of events unfortunately for me no-one told the clouds to stay out the way.

RyukyuMike said...

Ryan,
Sorry it took so long to reply to your Month Of June Comment. I was catchin up on sleep, I guess !