2014 Lunar Eclipse From the Pacific Coast

This monday I had a chance to take a few shots of the moon as we caused an eclipse. You can see a bit of the “blood moon” effect as well. The shooting conditions were OK, high altitude stratus obscured the view, but it was viewable! My photography setup was on a small telescope and the camera’s shutter slap + weight + lunar movement caused some blur.

Note the artifact on the upper right – this is due to poor alignment of the camera and achromatic aberration of the scope.

The beginning of the eclipse cut off a portion of the moon but didn’t change the color.

Here I used an iPhone 5S placed over the scope’s ocular:

Once the eclipse took effect over roughly 2/3 of the moon the blood moon effect began to show. It was hard to capture, as a dim red glow.

Some longer explosures caused blur, but captured the blood effect:

Believe it or not, the larger shot was using the iPhone 5S on the scope. I learned a few things, chiefly that I need a better coupling system for my telescope if I expect to use this for any quality work, but it was a fun experience and a weird, eerie thing to watch!