Tonight, I'm waking at the incredibly early hour of 1:30 AM to try and get some shots of the blood moon, which is a common name for a full lunar eclipse due to the red tint the moon takes on during totality. From 2:26 AM and 3:31 AM, the moon will be completely in the shadow of the Earth. On average, this only occurs in any given location about every 2.5 years and so, it's worth a little sleep deprivation.
I got up so early as I don't know how good the view will be from our home and I might need to drive somewhere for a good view. Luckily, the view from the bottom of our driveway turned out to be good enough. The cameras on our respective phones on the other hand, not so much. My wife and I tried several techniques with both of our phones (I'm using an iPhone 15 pro and she has a new model Android), but the pictures we were able to capture left quite a bit to be desired. I was able to take advantage of some new binoculars I recently purchased though.
At the predicted time, we could start seeing the dark curved shadow of the earth moving across the surface of the bright white moon. And then as it neared totality, the color shifted to a cloudy crimson. This is due to atmosphere scattering the shorter wavelength blue sunlight, while the longer red wavelengths are bent and refracted towards the moon.
In the end, it was a very cool experience and I'm glad I got up for it even though, I'll have to settle for someone else's photo.
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