So, on Wednesday, March 25th, my friend Deepak Kumar reached out and asked “Hey, Jim. You want to get up at 1AM Thursday morning, drive two hours to a dark sky site, shoot the Milky Way for an hour, then drive two hours back before going to work for the day?”. Sure, I said. I used my Canon R6 with a 14mm lens from one of the darkest spots in Arkansas, Tyler Bend Campground on the Buffalo National River.
I’m late to the party, had a full day Tuesday, but here are my images of the March 3 Lunar eclipse from the end of my driveway. Mine has an airplane going through it! Each image was just over a half second long so the plane had time to move.
Thanks go out to my friend Deepak Kumar for mentioning this event to me. The Lunar L, X and Lunar V features on the Moon are simply impact crater rims, with maybe some mountain ridges thrown in, that happen to look familiar to people who use the Roman alphabet. Once every lunar cycle, they are all brightly lit and visible, if you look. Look along the terminator, which is the line between line and shadow, local dawn on the Moon. Just above the bottom is the Lunar L. About a quarter way up from the bottom, the Lunar X stands out. Now look a little more than halfway up, the Lunar V is also there though perhaps not as prominent. This was taken around 8PM Friday night, with my 127mm Maksutov telescope and my Canon T8i camera. Ten frames stacked and sharpened with Autostakkert (a free little program designed just for this kind of thing). You might also think you see a Lunar O, but there are a lot of those here. 🙂
