During the lunar eclipse of fall, 2015, the moon rose in Portland, Oregon while already immersed in totality. The local media had really played up the concept of a “Blood Moon Rising” and thousand of people flocked to the Portland Heights to see the blood moon rise over the city on the eastern horizon just north of Mt. Hood, including me. However, twilight still lasts a long time on September 15, and the darkened moon was virtually impossible to spot in the bright sky, particularly when viewed through so much of Earth’s hazy atmosphere. The crowds were immensely dissapointed, almost riotous. I was essentially the first in my local crowd to spot it, only because I had a polar aligned telescope aimed at the moon’s coordinates. Photographing it was very difficult, not only because the crowds wanted a look through the camera on the scope, but because typical exposures for a total lunar eclipse were still overwhelmed by evening twilight and heat waves in the atmosphere blurred details. Accordingly, this is a stack of 8 shorter exposures to reduce the effect of twilght and to increase the signal to noise ratio from individual blurry, dim images.

Celestron Super C8 Plus with f/6.3 focal reducer/corrector. Canon EOS 20D camera. Stack of eight 2-second exposures at ISO 800.