Super Wolf Blood Moon

Just wondering who was outside when this started and caught them unawares, and what light they were carrying... and what light they should have been carrying if they paid better attention to the weather. To anyone reading this after dawn in North America, the full moon was as bright as they get, high in the sky, very poor flashlight conditions... why would anyone ever need a flashlight, they are superfluous! Then it got really really really dark. Go look.

I was outside for a few minutes watching it, then watched it sporadically through the window. Fortunately for viewing it is super clear out so I got a great view of the eclipse. Rare for our area. Unfortunately it's -5F outside so I wasn't going to stay out for very long.

There is a certain beauty in the frigid clear night sky though. The powerlines vibrate in the cold and make a consistent musical sound, like a fiddle, the supercold snow crunches underfoot, the eclipse slowly dissolving the moon. How do you capture that moment??

Carried an HDS Clicky N170. Outside I didn't need it but had it set to moonlight in the house so could leave the lights off and preserve night vision to look out the window.

I was expecting "meh," I've seen lunar eclipses before. I think what made it more dramatic for me is my remote rural location. My often dark-adapted eyes unfortunately (and unromantically and unpoetically) find bright moonlight irritating, but always impressive, not unlike the impressiveness of the amount of light on a clear sunny day (on a different scale with direct light rather than reflected, of course). The brightest moonlight is a full moon, and when it lands at the right time, say, midnight or there about, it was getting brighter all evening as it was getting higher in the sky. Then at it's peak brightness, slow but sure eclipse. But the brightness is gone for a lot of it, more than I expected. Then the moonlight returns, kind of like it's going through a full cycle in a few hours. Well, call me simple, but I was stunned and impressed. I carried a fivemega E1 w/ MN02, because I didn't think I needed a light, but it was bright enough. By now I'll want to take something brighter as the moonlight returns to spoil an otherwise perfect evening for flashlighting: the super blood wolf moon got me, but I was ready. Thank you CPF!

I was carrying a Zebralight SC600 III. And a Nikon D810 with a Sigma 50-500mm on a tripod:


9:21PM, maximum eclipse, magnitude 1.20:


bonus "Making Of" documentary:

WOW!!! Very nice results! Thank you for posting! Any more? They're always strange-looking, but this was the weirdest lunar eclipse I can remember seeing, like a late October setting moon dim and red on the horizon...except of course at the top of the sky (where I am). I'm still getting over it. Neat event, literally of astronomical proportions. I wish I had planned... I knew and forgot, blew it off, it just came upon my evening and it surprised me. But the point is, another good reason for a flashlight is, legitimately, lunar eclipse. I will definitely try to catch all the next ones, but I'll never get a shot like those... wow.

StarHalo said:

Click to expand...

Damnit, who was shining his flashlight onto the moon ands ruined a perfectly good shot for StarHalo?

chillinn said:

WOW!!! Very nice results! Thank you for posting! Any more?

Click to expand...

Just some ancillary bits; it was quite cloudy before the eclipse, but the clouds were loaded with ice crystals and made a monster rainbow ring that took up a large portion of the sky:


I did a backed off pic just to show the stars in that region of the sky, though you won't get much out of the picture unless you're viewing in a dark room with a completely clean monitor:

Eric242 said:

Damnit, who was shining his flashlight onto the moon ands ruined a perfectly good shot for StarHalo?

Click to expand...

You kids and your throwers..

I´m innocent, I can´t reach the moon...... triples are my kind of beam
Great pictures :thumbsup:

Really cool clear night in north Florida. Always amazed at how "dark" the sky gets when the full moon is eclipsed. Super Moon light is really bright but during the eclipse I did use my Titanium BOSS to help me set up my telescope for the linked image.

[emoji38][emoji437]

https://flic.kr/p/QA4heg

Eric242 said:

Damnit, who was shining his flashlight onto the moon ands ruined a perfectly good shot for StarHalo?

Click to expand...

PK did.

U2v5 said:

Really cool clear night in north Florida. Always amazed at how "dark" the sky gets when the full moon is eclipsed. Super Moon light is really bright but during the eclipse I did use my Titanium BOSS to help me set up my telescope for the linked image.

[emoji38][emoji437]

https://flic.kr/p/QA4heg

Click to expand...

Amazing photo! Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful shots star. Thanks for sharing.:thumbsup:

Great shots!

Like so many other astronomical events, I dragged my poor wife out of bed to see the eclipse. It was about 36 degrees. First she said no (too cold), but then she had to use the bathroom. "Now that you are up, I've got binoculars here by the backdoor." As always, she went outside and checked it out. Looked just like StarHalo's shots, and we both thought it was cool.

Beautiful photos, StarHalo. Thanks for sharing them! We didn't get to see it here so this is a nice consolation prize.