Blood Moon Eclipse

This morning I woke up in time to photograph the lunar eclipse. This lunar eclipse was special because it was simultaneous with the sunrise. The event, called a selenelion, is incredibly rare as the sun and moon have to be exactly 180 degrees apart. I caught the eclipse about 15 minutes after it started and watched it until the sun came up, which was as close to perfectly eclipsed as was possible. However, the sun was brightening the sky and the moon fell below the horizon before the eclipse was absolutely perfect.

These exposures are exactly as my camera captured them, except for a few images that were slightly tweaked. My camera is a Nikon D7000 with a Sigma 150-500mm zoom lens. The exposure changed dramatically as the dark side of the moon became red. I really had to crank up the ISO to capture the very faint image. That is why the red images look so grainy. Click on the image above to see a larger image.