Super Flower Blood Moon

Of course last night’s moon was the main sky attrac­tion; after all, this was the Super Flower Blood Moon – any­thing with three adjec­tives in front of its name was bound to be spe­cial. At 15 min­utes before mid­night, I stood in the field next to our barn and hoped the clouds I could see to the west would not drift in the direc­tion of the moon too quick­ly. My cam­era was locked on my tri­pod and I took a few test shots, try­ing to get my focus and expo­sure right. The clouds looked like waves com­ing in, with clear sky between them. Trying to remain opti­mistic, I ratio­nal­ized that even if the clouds came I might still have peri­ods of clear sky dur­ing which I could pho­to­graph the full lunar eclipse.

As the eclipse pro­gressed toward total­i­ty, I took a few pho­tos with the moon front and cen­ter. It was dif­fi­cult to see stars in that area of the sky because even in eclipse there was still a lot of light bounc­ing off the moon. I decid­ed I would take two images and blend them, one exposed for the moon, and one imme­di­ate­ly after at the same focal length, but with a longer expo­sure, to allow more stars to show. This pho­to is the result, tak­en at 12:30 this morn­ing, just before the clouds cov­ered the moon. I was feel­ing pret­ty small and hum­bled stand­ing there look­ing up.