Super Eclipse

The evening of September 27, 2015 was a beautiful one in central Kansas. Light winds, a cloudless sky, and comfortable temperatures made for a great evening to be out. A few minutes after sunset, a super moon rose through the haze of the horizon. I chose to photograph the moon against this windmill.

Super moon rising, 7:25pm

Super moon rising, 7:27 pm

Super moon rising, 7:28pm

I photographed the first 3 images with a 300mm lens, to include more of the surrounding environment. I then switched to a 500mm lens for the next image. This isolated the windmill and moon. I was across the pasture from the windmill, so the long lens also compressed the scene and helped to give the moon a much stronger presence.

Super moon rising, 7:32pm

From both experience and a quick scouting mission the night before, I knew where the moon should be from various locations in Great Bend. I started at Stone Sandpit, so that I would have a good view as the eclipse started. I decided to do a time lapse image. I took a 1 second exposure to capture the glow of the bright moon on the sandpit waters. I then took a series of photos that were only 1/160s long, so that the moon would be properly exposed. I then merged individual moon shots with the landscape image. Each moon photo is 3 minutes from the previous image.

Super moon eclipse time lapse, progressing to near totality; 3 minutes between exposures.

As totality neared, I relocated to the Barton County Courthouse. I captured the following image just after totality. I did replace the moon with a better in focus image taken a couple of minutes later.

Barton County Courthouse, just after the moon entered eclipse totality.

The next image is the First United Methodist Church, north side.

First United Methodist Church, Great Bend.

I finished the night back at Stone Sandpit. I captured a wide angle photo, exposed to show the stars. I did have to replace the moon with a properly exposed image since the 15 seconds for the stars left the moon with motion blur.

Stone Sandpit, full view.

The following two images show the difference that focal length and time can make in lunar eclipse images. The first image was taken at 300mm at the beginning of totality. The second image was taken at 500mm at the end of totality. I cropped both images to the same size; neither focal length will create a frame filling view.

9:17pm. This was the start of totality and taken with a 300mm lens.

10:08 pm. This was the end of totality and taken with a 500mm lens.

I enjoyed the night, especially since the eclipse happened at a decent hour of the day and the weather wasn’t bitterly cold like many of the recent eclipses.

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Rob Graham, Great Bend, KS

Late Summer Storm

The evening of September 10, 2015 didn’t start off to impressive. There were storms on the radar, but not close to Barton County. I went ahead and went out to Cheyenne Bottoms.

Distant storms with crepuscular beams, 5:46pm

Two fronts meet.

Light beam between the storm systems.

The merging storm cells created some nice crepuscular rays. More impressive was the light beam that formed between the cells. This gap was visible on cloud enhanced radar also.

Looking to the northwest, I could see the darker storm clouds coming. Mammatus clouds poked out ahead of the system.

Panorama of the approaching storm with mammatus clouds, 6:33pm.

Close up view of the approaching mammatus clouds.

It took another 10-15 minutes for the shelf cloud to finally appear. This close up shows some of the storm details. The white streaks are a flock of egrets, blurred by a slow shutter speed.

Approaching shelf cloud with egrets streaking by.

After the storm had come closer, I shot this panorama, looking down one of the dikes.

Panorama of the approaching storm, 7:09pm.

I attempted to capture some of the intermittent lightning by shooting continuous 1 second exposures. Most of the lightning was these little cloud bolts, and there wasn’t that much of it.

Shelf cloud and lightning

I then changed locations, moving up the road away from the storm a short distance. This brought the storm into a better position for this panorama. The low sun is on the left, lightning on the far right, and the headlights of an oncoming truck coming down the road.

Shelf cloud panorama, 7:20pm.

After capturing this panorama, I backed up a little farther in order to place leading edge into a slightly better view. Another series of 1 second exposures only captured a couple more lightning bolts.

Shelf cloud and lightning

Shelf cloud and lightning

The green under the shelf cloud was eerie. Even more unsettling was the sudden lack of wind as I was shooting the next image.

Shelf cloud, 7:25pm.

I quickly packed up my tripod and camera, and headed for the highway. I beat the rain/hail, but not by much. I circled around to the south of the storm, coming up behind it right at sunset. The low sun created a stunning glow in the passing clouds, which were often back lit by distant lightning.

Sunset glow, 7:46pm.

The whole experience was amazing. I have photographed a couple of other shelf clouds, but never from this close and length of time. The backside of the storm brought extreme straight winds to the county and points east, causing loss of power and significant tree and roof damage in places.

Thank you for visiting my blog and sharing in the experience of this storm. Please click on the link in the upper left of this page to sign up for automatic notifications of new posts to the blog.

Rob Graham, Great Bend, KS