I stayed up late (past midnight) to watch the Blood Moon. This is a rare full moon eclipse. It started at about 10PM with the peak “blood” at around midnight and then clearing away thru 2AM. North America will see a blood moon 4 times between now and September (called a Tetrad). Miss those and you will have to wait until 2032!
Here is the full moon before the eclipse. Check out the blood at the end!
After the moon goes dark, the blood starts to show.
This is the early part of it. Check out the two white dots (slightly above and to the far right). These are Mars and a bright star Spica (I believe).
And finally the complete closeup.
For those interested, I shot this with a Canon EOS 7D with a 70-300 zoom lens. I played around with the aperture, ISO and shutter speed throughout the evening. The last picture here is ISO 800 at f/6.3 at a 1.6 second exposure. With the moon at full brightness early in the evening ISO was only 200 at f/11 and 1/80 of a second. No color correction or other filters were applied…. this is as true as it gets.
This was considerably easier to focus and get some great shots than the Transit of Venus we did in 2012!
Khare Family Adventures 