So this last week we were all able to witness something that does not happen very often, a Super Blue Blood Moon. The name invokes images of werewolves and witches, and while I personally didn't see anything like that but what I did see was just as magical. Before I show the photographic magic lets break down the name a little so we understand the significance of the event.

"Super" refers to "a new of full moon closely coinciding with perigee, the moon's closest point to Earth in its monthly orbit"(www.earthsky.org). We have these multiple times a year with each time offering a great opportunity for a beautiful show of the moon. "Blue" refers to the fact that this is the second full moon of the month. While most of the time the moon is not actually blue, much to my children's confusion. "Blood" refers to the total lunar eclipse that also occurred. In doing some research it appears that the lunar eclipse occurrence is actually very common, happening multiple times in the year. But the kicker is that in order to get to see it, you have to be lined up in the right place. So for us in the Alaska, that time was last week but come this June's lunar eclipse we would need to be on the other side of the globe. You can check out all kinds of information on lunar ecplises at TimeandDate.com.

While most of North America could see this eclipse in one form or another only Alaska and Hawaii were able to see the complete eclipse. It began around 2:30am and lasted till just after 6:00am, so in order to see it you have to be pretty committed to either staying up super late or getting up crazy early. Since I had to work that morning I chose getting up crazy early. I knew I couldn't make a full day of dealing with teenagers if I got up at 2:30am so I decided to get up in the middle of the total eclipse and then photograph the moon's return to the light. For some reason I didn't think about the fact that I had to leave at 6:00am for work and at sometime in there I would have to get ready for work. So when I got up at 4:00am I slipped on my fleece pj bottoms, my boots, my gloves, my hat and multiple coats and sweatshirts and set everything up on my back porch in -6 degree weather and set to shooting. Sometime around 5:30am I came to realize that I wanted to keep shooting but I also needed to get ready for work so I would; set a timer on my camera, run in the house, run down the stairs and grab my hair stuff, run back up the stairs, throw my hair stuff on the table, run outside to reset my timer on my camera, run back in the house and do my hair and then start the whole process over again with my clothes and everything else that needed done. I finally brought my camera in about 5 minutes before I left the house for work. Neatless to say I was already pretty worn out but with some coffee fortitude I made it through the day. So enjoy what I could capture of the "Super Blue Blood Moon".

This was one of the first shots I got at around 4:00am, when the moon was still in full eclipse.

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This shot was taken as the moon was coming out of its eclipse. Shooting up until this was relatively easy, once the full brightness of the moon started coming back it became much harder to show the details on the dark side of the moon as well as the bright.

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One of the really important things to remember when shooting at night is that your camera needs to hold completely still. I was shooting on my wooden back porch and my guess is this shot was taken when I stepped on a plank to close to the camera.

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The last decent shot I got that still showed the dark side of the moon, and as you can see the brightness of the light really started to wash things out. Can't wait to have an opportunity to try and shoot something like this again.

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