Moon Eclipse and Uranus

Observing the sky object could be anywhere and you will find surprising discovery.

This is what I experienced when I was in Soe, a small town, capital of TTS district in Timor island, October 2014 for a duty. I already knew that in the night of 8 October 2014, after sunset, there will be a total moon eclipse, and I have purposely brought a handy, collapsible tripod for my Nikon D7000 to take the picture of the eclipse.

Since 5:15pm (already almost dark there) I have already set my equipment and, surrounded by local people, I took the moon eclipse in a few minutes interval. I also used movie mode of the camera. My first attempts were not very successful. With almost dark surrounding, and the small tripod, I could hardly make focus adjustment. Finally I got a good photo of the moon eclipse and I am  satisfied with the results.

When I was back in hotel room and checked the Stellarium, I found a small dot at the upper side of the moon which, to my surprise is Uranus! I hurriedly checked my photo again and enlarged it. And yes! A small dot emerged, which I highly confident that it was Uranus.

Here are the photo series I took on the eclipse, and below are the enlarged photos of Uranus, with relative distance to the moon and a close-up photo. Not very clear, but as amateur astronomer I am glad that I could take one of the sun's planet, the sister planet of the Earth.

This is for the second time I accidentally identified a planet. Previously I was able to capture Neptune. Read my article about this in the following link: The first observation of moon and planet

First attempt, at 5:31pm local time (WITA), blurred

Second attempt, at 5:38pm, getting better

This is the 19th attempt at 6:24pm, the earth's shadow already receded

This is with the movie-mode of my Nikon D7000:

And these are the photos of Uranus (i) relative to the moon (on the upper right), and (ii) close-up photo:

(i) Uranus, seen as blue dot on the upper right side

(ii) Planet Uranus in close-up, the blurred tail is because the camera is set on a fixed tripod with longer exposure

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It has the third-large planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System.  Uranus is similar in composition to Nepture, and both are of different chemical composition to the larger gas giant Jupiter and Saturn (Wikipedia).  

Uranus as taken by Voyager 2 in 1986 (Wikipedia)