Craters of Blood

Description:

Early on the morning of March 14, 2025, we were treated to one of my favorite celestial events to witness…a total lunar eclipse. 

The bright, shining full Moon, gave way to the ruddy and shadowy apparition known as a Blood Moon.   This was a rare occasion when the Earth is positioned precisely in between the Sun and Moon!   During the hour it spent deep in the shadow of Earth, the lunar surface took on a rich menagerie of color.

But why is the Moon illuminated at all?   

This phenomenon is created as sunlight refracts through Earth's atmosphere, bending the rays toward the Moon.  A small portion still hits the lunar surface, dimly illuminating it, and reflecting light back to us.  The coloration resembles that of a sunset because it is the result of the same optical physics we experience on Earth, in which the refracted sunlight shifts color to the red end of the spectrum!   As I tend to do, I saturated the vibrant kaleidoscope of tones far beyond what the human eye can perceive.

The beauty you can extract from deep within these images is a constant reminder of what I love about astrophotography.

This image is very detailed and huge (165megapixels).   I love the vibrant saturation that reveals a depth of the eclipse hues.   Beyond the traditional red-orange, we see a yellow band extending across the midline of the lunar surface and, of course, the beautiful lavender to purple transition as we approach the last bits of bright blue in direct sunlight right on the limb.  

Capture Notes:

For this one I combined images collected from two different systems.   I used the EdgeHD for the lunar surface detail and the 600mm lens for the overall scene, including color and bulk brightness.  

The EdgeHD images were collected in a planetary-style, meaning saved off as an uncompressed, .SER-format video.  This was stacked in AutoStakkert! using the best 250 frames out of 500 from each channel.  They were sharpened in PixInsight and combined into an RGB image.  In Photoshop the channels were further aligned and prepared for composite.

The DSLR image through the lens was a single 2s exposure.   I prepared it in Photoshop including a second layer for the "ultra saturation" of color.

The two images were aligned and composited, using the small-scale detail features from the EdgeHD to augment the DSLR image using several exploratory blending mode techniques.  Though I've been through it several times, I have not fully documented this process, and it seems a bit different each time.   I hope to come to some sort of standardization in the future, but the eclipses are spread out far enough I seem to "forget what I know" by the time the next one comes along.

Enjoy this outcome anyway!

Equipment Details: