On March 23rd, there was a deep partial eclipse of the Moon, which made for a nice event in and of itself, but also made the skies much darker for viewing comet Hale-Bopp. Since Seattle skies are always lit up from city lights, and were projected to be overcast that night, we drove east over the moutains to Ellensburg, Washington. Here are a couple of photos that we took of the event.

Images Copyright 1997, Cathy & Tom Saxton. All rights reserved.

These photos were shot with Fuji Super G Plus 800 color film, using a Canon EOS body. The comet photo was taken with a Canon zoom lens set at 70mm and f4, using a 4-minute exposure, with the camera mounted on a polar-aligned Meade 7" LX50 telescope. The moon photo was taken with a 500mm f8 mirror telephoto lens at 1/4th second exposure shot from a tripod. Both photos were scanned and enhanced in Adobe Photoshop.

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