Lunar eclipse live time-lapse video captures the disappearing moon (Video)

By Melissa Bell



At the Washington Monument, the full moon is shadowed by the Earth. (NASA/Bill Ingalls/AP)

Last night, the moon slipped from beneath the sun's light and floated ghost-like in the shadow of the Earth in a total lunar eclipse. For skywatchers, the event was made all the more unusual by the eclipse falling on the same day as the winter solstice.

William Castleman, a professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Florida, created a time-lapse video of the moon, centering it in his camera lens and watching a shadow eat away at the moon to reveal a great red orb. He filmed it in Gainesville, Fla., between 1:10 a.m. and 5:03 a.m. He said the temperature was in the mid-30s and, though it was cloudy in the first part of the evening, the sky cleared up and gave him perfect visibility.

For the photography buffs out there, he used a 4-inch telescope on a equatorial mount that followed the moon at a lunar tracking rate and took a photograph every 20 seconds with a Canon 40D. He assembled the photographs using Quicktime Pro software.