I used my Wyze V3 camera to capture yesterday morning’s lunar eclipse:
This was the longest partial lunar eclipse in over 500 years. To the left of the moon, you’ll see the Taurus and Orion constellations appear, then the brightest star in the sky, Sirius. Starting at about 9 seconds into the clip, you’ll also see the Pleiades (the Seven Sisters) cluster emerge from the glare of the over-exposed moon as it goes into eclipse – it is just above the moon.
The video covers 7 hours (from 1 a.m. – 8 a.m.) with one frame taken every 30 seconds. This is not too shabby for a Wyze v3 video camera that only costs ~$35 (even less when on sale).
If anyone missed this lunar eclipse, there will be another one in only 6 months (on May 16, 2022), It will also be visible from North America. Most importantly, it will be Total, so it will last longer than Friday’s Partial eclipse. One other nice thing . . . it will start its main portion at 10:27 p.m. EST, so you won’t have to get up in the middle of the night if you live on the east coast!
The 30-second time-lapse interval seemed to work well for me. Be sure to start with the moon on the left side of your screen since it will move to the right as the eclipse progresses.
I like being cautious and choosing a shorter interval, because if the resulting video is to slow, I can speed it up in post and I will still look fine, but if my interval was too long in my resulting videos too short it’s going to look horrible if I try to slow it down.
I would suggest to everyone to download a star chart app that you can point at the sky at night. Some nights, you may look up and be looking at 3 planets and not know it. The universe is so fascinating.
