Total Eclipse of the Heart

With this evening's total eclipse, I decided it was a perfect night for some experimentation with my Nikon d40 DSLR. So I got out my tripod and my zoom lens (nothing fancy, just the 55-200mm lens kit that I got extra with the camera) and set about snapping photos. At first I wasn't having much luck taking photos of the moon out my bathroom window; the double-paned glass was created a weird ghosting effect. So then I took things outside and got serious.

With the tripod ready and the camera aimed upwards, I set the mode to manual, with a shutter speed of 1second and an aperture of f5. I don't mess too much yet with ISO settings, but to anyone who's interested, it was 400. The big issue with these settings is that even the slightest camera shake (like just pressing the button to open the shutter) can create a blur. I had to set it to a 10 second timer, that way I could press the button and step the heck away from the thing before it took the picture. What resulted was the best picture of the night: