December 21, 2010 is the winter solstice this year, the shortest day of the year, and the first day of winter. the moon will be full. In the early morning, the full moon will be passing directly through the northern half of the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow (the umbra), i.e., a full lunar eclipse will be visible to almost all of North America! The eclipse starts at 12:30 AM Eastern Standard Time (Tuesday morning).

the moon using the new 8mm eyepiece (56x magnification).

Jupiter in the backyard. These 2 shots were taken with the new 8mm eyepiece (56x magnification). This pic was taken with the ISO set to auto and no exposure compensation. managed to pick up some of Jupiter’s bands. adjusted the ISO to 400, and got the moons, but too bright to see the bands.

Mesa Verde, Colorado. The bright star is Altair. this was a 2 second exposure.

Just held the digital camera to the eyepiece and shot some pictures. To get the moon to come out at all, I set a custom white balance, turned exposure compensation down as far as it would go (to -2). the exposure time was only 1⁄6 s. this is jupiter. the 4 smaller blurry dots are the 4 ‘gallilean’ moons (the 4 largest moons that galilleo could see with his telescope in the 16th century).