Thanks to everyone for visiting this gallery and for adding your enthusiastic comments and compliments. I've had questions about what equipment I used for these images, how I was able to take the pictures without a tripod, and how I managed to get them posted so quickly (most images were posted within a few minutes of being taken). First, all shots were taken handheld with a Canon 30D and Canon EF 300 mm f/4L IS USM lens with a Canon 1.4X telextender. The 300mm lens produces excellent quality images, even with the extender. What's more, it is image stabilized, which enables me to get decent handheld images handheld at shutter speeds as low as 1/20 second. As far as the quick posting speed, I took the pictures in my backyard, a half dozen or so at a time. I shot them as Raw files, then downloaded them on my laptop into the Canon DPP program. I reviewed them quickly, picked the one that looked best, edited exposure, contrast, then cropped (heavily-the posted images are 100% crops) and converted it to a tiff file. I then opened the tiff in Paint Shop Pro X and applied a scripted batch process editing sequence that I created which applied an unsharp mask for local contrast, high-pass sharpening, my watermark, and compressed the file to a jpeg suitable for the web, which I then uploaded to PBase. It only takes a few minutes to do this start to finish. By then, it was time to go out for the next picure (I took them in 5-8 minute intervals). This kept me busy continously for four hours, but it was fun and worthwhile. After the last partial eclipse image was taken, I used the exif info to find the shot time for each picture and added this below each image for reference. Finally, I cut and pasted individual images onto black backgrounds in PSP-X to make the merged images. Unfortunately, I don't have a tracking tripod and couldn't take any longer exposures, so my totality shots are rather disappointing. Sorry if you hoped to see beautiful orange pictures. View the 13-image and the 30-image merged panoramas at the beginning of the gallery in original size for full effect. To see images from the last eclipse, go to the August 28, 2007 Lunar Eclipse Gallery.