In last month’s blog and newsletter, I promised a break from the Flying Bat/Giant Squid with some Milky Way shots during the August New Moon. Big mistake! Publicizing those plans gave Mother Nature just enough lead time to whip up a massive storm system across the Midwest. With thick clouds stretching from Colorado to Iowa, both our flying trip in the Cardinal and our Milky Way shoot over the Bridges of Madison County were scrubbed.
However, because I paid zero attention to the partial lunar eclipse until the last second, I snuck one past her during August’s Full Moon! That oversight gave me just enough of a gap in the clouds to capture the eclipsed Sturgeon Moon from the front patio.
Partial Lunar Eclipse of August’s Full Sturgeon Moon
I hadn’t been paying much attention to the stream of “how to capture” and “how to process” lunar eclipse emails coming from PhotoPills and my other astrophotography mentors. Between weeks of solid cloud cover and my habit of ignoring non-New Moon events—the same reason I always manage to miss the Northern Lights!—I completely overlooked that a partial eclipse was happening and visible right from my front patio.
If it weren’t for a heads-up from Ann Chavtur earlier in the day and a last-minute text from Victoria right as I was heading to bed, I would have missed it entirely! Spurred into action by Victoria’s photo of the moon rising in Ohio, I grabbed my gear to see if Mother Nature might give us a break in the clouds.
After setting up my camera, tripod, and hand controller, I stepped outside around moonrise (~19:50 MDT) to dial in the focus. As the full moon rose through the lower atmosphere, atmospheric refraction gave it a striking, eclipse-like orange hue. It drifted through a few thin cloud layers before vanishing into a dense bank of weather. Wanting to protect my gear from potential rain, I packed everything inside and set an alarm for 22:00 MDT—just ahead of the maximum eclipse at 22:13 MDT. My original plan was to keep it quick and take only a “few” frames, but that quickly ballooned into 234 shots between 22:05 and 22:40 MDT!
Since partial lunar eclipses don’t offer a ton of dramatic movement, I narrowed those 230+ images down to just three processed shots for the Events/Lunar Eclipse gallery:
- Pre-Eclipse Shots (P1 Phase): Two frames captured during setup show the full moon rising through thin cloud layers, bathed in a deep orange atmospheric glow—giving off total pre-Halloween vibes (sure, it’s two months away, but with decorations already hitting store shelves, I’m leaning into it!).
- Composite HDR Image: A blend of two distinct exposures to properly capture both the brightly lit lunar surface and the detailed shadow cast during maximum eclipse.
The eclipse science and capture, processing, and equipment details are in the lunar eclipse gallery. The HDR composite image is above – the rising moon bathed in its atmospheric orange glow and passing through the broken cloud banks (a.k.a., early Halloween treats) are shown below.
