Lunar Tetrad 2014-2015

This series of four total lunar eclipses were widely visible throughout the United States. This gave me a chance to try properly photographing a lunar eclipse for the first time — and with multiple opportunities, I could try again in a few months with less mistakes.

Lunar eclipses are tricky for a camera to capture, since the Moon radically changes in brightness over the course of the eclipse.  Unlike human eyes, which can adapt to both bright and dark conditions simultaneously, cameras can only do one or the other, and so the settings must be changed and adjusted while the eclipse is in progress.

The four eclipses occurred in roughly 6-month intervals (corresponding to the alignment of the Sun and Earth with the Moon’s line of nodes) from Spring 2014 to Autumn 2015.

Eclipse 1: April 14, 2014

The first eclipse had totality centered around midnight, so I spent the hours viewing it from my front yard. I was happy that I could see it through from start to finish, and I was able to get both close-up and wide-angle shots of the Moon through its journey. Unfortunately, the telescope-camera connection (eyepiece based at the time) started to rotate towards the later stages of the eclipse, which shows up in my photographs. I immediately went to get a more secure form of connection.

Eclipse 2: October 8, 2014

The second eclipse was mostly clouded out in Las Vegas, but I was able to get a few snapshots of totality after furiously chasing past the clouds through the city. No telescope photos this time, but still got a few images from the camera’s zoom lens.

Eclipse 3: April 4th, 2015

For the third eclipse, I took a trip to Death Valley to view the eclipse in dark skies. The Full Moon before and after the eclipse didn't really help with that — sort of a missed opportunity, really. However, during the eclipse, the dimming moonlight allowed more and more of the night sky to emerge, until the totally eclipsed moon was present in the middle of the most star-filled skies I've seen.

Eclipse 4: September 27, 2015

The last one of the four, which also happened to be a supermoon at the same time. Though most of the day looked clear, thin clouds rolled in during the afternoon. The cloud cover wasn't total, and I had done my best on the previous three eclipses already, so I went to a local mesa to test my luck.

The clouds broke enough for some good views during totality and afterwards, but the gaps in between gave no reference point for the Moon's location so that it could be picked up again. In addition, the telescope's motor stopped working just as totality ended, which meant the second half of the eclipse was tracked by hand. All in all, not terrible, but could've been better. Time was convenient for this one, although a timelapse might not be salvageable.