Time lapse video of Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse on December 21, 2010 from 1:10 AM EST (6:10 GMT) to 5:03 AM EST (10:03 GMT) from Gainesville Florida. This is the image stabilized version of the video originally posted on December 21, 2010 at: vimeo.com/18046748 The music is Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes: Sirènes.

I used a 4 inch telescope (Takahashi TSA-102 with TOA-35 field flattener) on an equatorial mount (Losmandy GM-8) that was polar aligned and following the Moon at a lunar tracking rate. Photographs were taken every 20 seconds with a dslr camera (Canon EOS-40D) using EOS Utility software at ISO 100 or ISO 200 in aperture priority mode with variable exposure compensation. Spot metering was used. The tracking was manually corrected every 20 to 30 minutes to keep the Moon centered in the field. Photos were assembled in Quicktime Pro software to make the time lapse video. The video was stabilized in After Effects CS5. Sony Vegas 9 merged the video, music and text.