I planned this morning’s moon photography adventure like I did almost all the rest — virtually no planning at all. I’m more of an opportunist than a planner when it comes to photographing celestial events. But at times I have gotten very lucky.
I had a leisurely breakfast. About a half hour before moon set I began considering whether I should try to get some photos of it. After all this was a Super Blue Blood Moon, a combination of three fairly common events that last happened in 1866 according to one source I read.
It’s a Super Moon because the moon is very close to the earth now. Big deal, the difference in size is small and irrelevant when composing with a long lens. It’s a Blue Moon which means it is the second full moon of the month, something that happens “once in a blue moon” but actually fairly often. And there was going to be a total eclipse of the moon when the moon will turn a deep blood red color, but you had to be in southeast Asia to see this totality. In NH the eclipse would be just a smudge on the top left of the moon, as seen in the photo above.
So I relaxed on my couch pondering whether I should move. I used an app on my phone to quickly check out three spots within about 10 minutes drive that might be good. I found two of them had potential and decided to head out.
I drove downhill past the first spot with a huge moon right in front of me. I considered stopping in the middle of the road. But then a bit farther down the hill I took a left and drove 3 miles to the spot I had chosen. I knew it well because my wife and I hike to the end of this dead-end road fairly often. Someone has cleared a huge field and put in a driveway for a home, but the home is in the future.
In the photo above right, the nearby hills are in NH and far hills are in VT.
I wound up taking photos for just under 10 minutes before the moon disappeared into a cloud bank over Vermont. Here is the moon at 6:50 this morning, with just a hint of an eclipse.
Two minutes later I had moved to position the moon on the other side of the one tree that remains in the field. Sorry, but a lighthouse wasn’t readily available as a foreground object.
Five minutes more passed and I got this photo as the eclipse had progressed and the moon was heading down behind low clouds over Vermont.
The mornig was getting lighter. I got this shot a minute later. Note, I moved around trying to vary the composition while not sliding down the icy slope.
Here are two more photos I took just before 7 AM.
On September 27, 2015, we had a real Blood Moon. Again my planning consisted of heading out into my back yard at roughly the right time. I got some photos with a long lens and noticed that at near totality the Milky Way was visible. So I grabbed a wide-angle lens and did a panorama of the Milky Way. The photo below is that panorama with the telephoto shot of the moon superimposed. The small white dot to the left of the blood moon is the moon taken at about the same time as the blood moon. It is bright because the exposures were very different.
By CLICKING HERE, you can see more celestial events I have been lucky to photograph .