This most recent lunar eclipse was on a cold, clear night. I made Nick join me in the grade school's field behind our house, where we could get a good view without the neighborhood's houses and trees obstructing our view. We stood and watched as the moon rose in the sky, my camera poised on its tripod, taking photos every few minutes. I was hoping to catch the eclipse as the earth's shadow started to pass across the moon, but the moon was behind the horizon at that point and it was still light out. I also wanted to watch as the moon began to emerge from behind the earth's shadow, but we were all too frozen by that point and wanted to get back inside to thaw ourselves. So, we just watched the middle of the eclipse, while the moon was an eerie blackish orange in earth's shadow as it gradually floated higher into the sky and toward the west.
I'm sure you've all seen composite photos which show the moon partly covered, fully covered, and partly uncovered, all right next to each other, right? I wanted to try something like that. I set up my tripod and camera, figured out the moon's direction of travel, aimed the camera so the moon would start in the bottom left of the frame, and then snapped a photo every few minutes, tracking the moon's path toward the upper right of the frame. Well, guess what! The composite photos you've seen, they're all lies!! The distance the moon travels while staying in the earth's shadow is a LOT. As a result, those partially covered, fully covered, and partially uncovered moons had to be re-positioned in order to be right next to each other within the same frame. See what I mean? Here's my composite where I did not re-position any of the moons (3rd from the bottom left, I must've bumped my camera):
All of these moons are in earth's shadow. At the bottom left, they are probably completely behind earth's shadow, while you can see toward the top right there's a brighter edge as the moon begins to emerge from behind the shadow. In just that small amount of change of the shadow, the moon has traveled quite a bit within a single frame! So now you know: those lunar eclipse photos are more edited than I thought. Thought, next time I will use a timer so the moon is more evenly spaced, and a remote so I don't have to touch my camera to take a photo.
Here's another moon picture, just for fun:
