Eclipse

I got super lucky to get this one for a variety of reasons.

First, lots of cloud cover, so didn't expect to get a clean view of anything, but stayed up late (for me - midnight!) just in case and got lucky with a gap in the clouds.

Got outside and realized that the eclipse is so dark compared to the full moon that I needed a tripod (d'oh!) - went back inside and my big one is set up with binoculars on it, so went with the small one, which is really a bit too light for that lens.

Managed to get the camera pointing up vertically on the ball head by shortening two of the tripod legs a bit, so the whole assembly was a bit iffy, and I was kneeling on my damp driveway in PJ's, a fleece and flip flops (ahh the mental image) trying to look through the viewfinder.

I didn't want to bung the ISO up too much 'cos my camera gets noisy, so took a bunch of 2 second and 1 second exposures and hoped for the best - two of them were in focus enough to be useful (for the web - won't blow up any bigger as the moon moves at that magnification even at 1 second and I had a static, somewhat wobbly tripod, so there's motion blur involved).

Oh, and there was either a raccoon or opossum (not sure which - only got to see its eyes reflecting by flashlight as it hid in the bushes) down the side of the house growling and hissing - hopefully at the weird moon rather than me, but I didn't really want to find out.