Lunar Eclipse of September 27, 1996

During the night of September 26-27, 1996, the moon passed through the shadow of the earth, resulting in a lunar eclipse. I was fortunate enough to have clear skies and a nice view during the best part of the event. I used my then-two-day-old Celestron C5+ telescope and a 35mm camera to take some pictures, which I then scanned and placed on this page. No image processing was done.

The pictures below are in chronological order, beginning at 1:20 UT and ending at 4:35 UT. They show the progression of the umbral phase of the eclipse. The moon has just begun to enter the umbra in the first photograph, and is almost completely back out of it in the last.

Each picture is a link - follow it to look at a larger version of the picture (each image is less than 7KB).

These photographs are also featured on the Student Reports of the Lunar Eclipse page of the Athena Project, and in issue #20 of Observatory Techniques Magazine.

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