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DRT wrote:It seems that the east of the country will have clearer skies than in the west so you might be lucky. The forecast here has now changed to a blanket of cloud

Currently forecast to be clear here from 18:00 until the cloud moves in between 01:00 and 02:00 ... I'll be hoping it's late.

The astronomy weather app that I use is not predicting good news for my location...
So I am choosing to believe the BBC...
Only time will tell.

We're showing clear here, so I'll be checking it out! Happens at 7:11 pm here, though, so probably won't be all that spectacular.

South London: sky clear. Moon still white.

Maybe, label-bias-tastic, I could now convince myself that the moon has a slight pinkish hue.

And I could definitely convince myself that I need strong spectacles. Or less Madeira.

jdaw1 wrote:Maybe, label-bias-tastic, I could now convince myself that the moon has a slight pinkish hue.

It is white again.

Shadow now very obvious at top-left of moon.

Moon half-eaten.

That is very impressive. I feel I ought to propitiate something, somehow.

What if it never comes back?

LGTrotter wrote:What if it never comes back?

The Port will still keep you happy.


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The end is nigh.

But I can't see any blood.

No! Effing cloud!

I am suffering from immense quantities of dew. My equipment is soaking wet causing things to mist up and preventing me from taking photographs

I'm getting a bit of blood now though.

Very glad I stayed up. Never seen one before and it was worth the wait. A good shooting star were the sprinkles on my cupcake. Goodnight.

Gentlemen, I give you the Blood Moon...

Nice job. Superb viewing here too, all very clear.
Will post my 35mm SLR attempt in the morning (when I can get the camera connected to a PC without waking others), but I can definitely say that your photo above will be far better - I only have a 200mm lens, which reduces the pixels more than I would like for this. I noticed something tiny and bright pass in front of the Blood Moon, which I think I caught on camera - possibly a satellite? Tbd. Photos taken around the same time as yours - which I think is upside-down btw, the white is/was at the bottom?

PhilW wrote:Photos taken around the same time as yours - which I think is upside-down btw, the white is/was at the bottom?

Yip - taken through a refractor with a diagonal fitted so it is upside down and flipped right to left.

Nice! I could see it in Seattle, but at 7:11 pm there was too much ambient light for it to be really impressive. That and there was a bit of haze on the horizon making it less optimal.

Somewhat less impressively than Derek, these were with a 35mm DSLR with 200mm lens; normal moon from earlier in the evening, and blood moon:

DRT wrote:Gentlemen, I give you the Blood Moon...

Screen Shot 2015-09-28 at 03.35.09.png

Surely a tawny moon rather than blood!?

Doggett wrote:Surely a tawny moon rather than blood!?

Nice pictures, Phil.

It wasn't easy to get the focus/exposure right given the differences in surface brightness on the moon's disk.

Doggett wrote:Surely a tawny moon rather than blood!?

Perhaps "blood moon colour" can be added to the port tasting lexicon

DRT wrote:Nice pictures, Phil.

Thanks Derek. I was reasonably pleased with the pictures, though I had expected better resolution; I was surprised to find that the moon only covers about 1% of the frame on my 35mm DSLR with 200mm lens. While longer lenses would be nice, they get cost-prohibitive quickly; for astro-photography at least, a camera mounted on the scope (ideally a tracking scope) would clearly be both better and cheaper.

I took a few shots of the sky in general as well; is the top left star in Orion usually a distinctly different colour (orange/yellow) to the (blue/white) others?