Super harvest killer blood moon

I'm enjoying hyperbole in the title. Last night was the lunar eclipse at perihelion and harvest moon. I was able to get photos with my 3-inch refractor by running back and forth along the front sidewalk to dodge my neighbor's trees.

First presentable photo after moon rise:

A little adjustment to the exposure brought out a double-red effect: red from lunar eclipse and red from being low in the sky.

First blood, that is, the first photo that shows the moon completely red with a hint of an airplane in the lower left:

At this point, I started noticing stars in the picture:

Here, I painfully discovered that in the rush to find a clear view between trees, I hadn't polar aligned my scope suitably for a 15-second exposure. I captured a plane in that time, but the stars and moon moved in picture, leaving them blurry:

Polar alignment was corrected in this photo exposed long enough to bring the stars out:

And this one:






















The minutes before or after totality are under-rated in my opinion. This is the best time to image a band of purple on the umbra's edge.

All of these photos were made possible by my neighbor's kind attention to good lighting.

jg