To Catch an Eclipse

By John Reed

This was to be my last chance in seven years to photograph a total eclipse of the moon, I had to make it a good one.  I remember setting my alarm for the ungodly hour of 3:30 am.  The next day was a work day.  I had gathered my camera, tripod, and heavy coat in a pile next to the door, predicting that I would not be too coherent the next morning.

When the alarm did go off it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be to get up three hours early and my sprits were pretty high until I stepped outside.  Then the cold dampened them and promptly froze them.  The moon was there though.  The weather had held.  I ran back in and got the equipment, setting it up with shaky, stiff hands.

The only way I have ever been able to successfully take multiple exposures is to leave the shutter open for the entire duration and use the lens cap for a temporary shutter.  I had decided to expose the film every five minutes with an exposure of about 1 second at f/8 using ASA 25 slide film (yes, I know you think I'm crazy for using such slow film at night, but it was all I had at the time).  I determined these exposures using Steve Wilson's astrophotography book, but I knew that I could only guess at exposures during totality.  This fact and the slow film almost ruined the whole thing.

With the moon full I made the first exposure, uncovering the lens and recapping it after a second.  I then retreated indoors and began a long pre dawn morning of watching TV and braving the cold every five minutes.  I usually hardly had time to get warmed up before it was time to go back out.  At the eclipse's start I caught the beginning of On Golden Pond which for some reason HBO was playing at that time of night.  By the end of the movie I had made over twenty exposures, taking the moon all the way from full to almost completely covered.  The last exposure before totality I noticed something very peculiar.  Usually an eclipse will begin to look slightly red just before totality, but this one was dead black.  Nothing.  After the crescent went I couldn't see it at all.  During totality I could only see the moon with averted vision!  It was that dark.  I knew I had made a mistake using the slow film, but continued anyway, using an exposure of 15 seconds, the longest I felt I could get away with, and opened the camera all the way to f/1.8.  This process proceeded through most of another movie until a slim crescent once again appeared, causing me to stop the camera back down to f/8 and use the old standby 1 second exposure.  I finally quit at 6:30 as it was time to get ready for work.  The sky was just beginning to brighten in the east – time to quit anyway.  My last exposure caught the moon half full.  The eclipse was over for me.

After I closed the shutter, I looked through the viewfinder without moving the tripod and to my dismay the moon had gone out of the picture some minutes before.  My last four or five exposures had been on the side of the film cavity!  I had somewhat misjudged the direction the moon would go across the sky.  I kicked myself and packed up.

I got the film back a week later and opened the box of slides with unsteady hands right there in the Photo Center.  I'm not sure if I yelled or not, I wasn't paying attention to anything or anyone but that tiny, translucent rectangle.  There it was going all the way from full to totality, with totality showing up very faintly, then partially out again.  I could even see part of the roof of my apartment.  There were over thirty images in all, forming a graceful arc across a greenish sky!

Thank God there won't be another in seven years.  I don't think I could last.