The Super Blood Wolf Moon of 2019

Last night, January 20, 2019,  I was able to photograph the Super Blood Wolf Moon

The January full moon is called the “Wolf Moon”. The “Wolf Moon” gets its name from Native American tribes and early colonial times, when people would see packs of wolves in the wintertime, howling outside the villages at night because they were hungry.

A super moon, a full moon that occurs during the moons closest approach to earth happens around three or four times a year.

A total lunar eclipse, or blood moon, so-called because the moon turns orangey red while in the Earths shadow, happens two to three times a year.

Even rarer is when a total eclipse occurs during a super moon or a Super Blood Moon. The last time this happened was in 1982, and the next one won’t be until 2033.

Not wanting to wait fourteen years for the opportunity to photograph the next Super Blood Moon, I decided if the skies were clear, I’d brave the cold and try to photograph this rare celestial event.

Totality, when the moon is fully in the shadow of the earth didn’t happen until almost 11pm Iowa time. The temps had dropped to -5F or -20C and high cirrus clouds had started to move in at my shooting location.

I probably could have shot the eclipse right from my back deck but a couple friends of mine gathered at Indian Creek Nature Center  and we decided to share the sight together.

In temps this cold, everything works slower. The LCD screen on my Nikon D850 started to lag as the temps dropped, the legs on my tripod stiffened up and batteries drained quickly in the cold.

The clouds thickened and we decided to call it a night even though the totality phase of the eclipse was still going on.

I’m usually one of those photographers that tends to stick it out until the very end. But with a wakeup call at 4:30am, I decided I probably wasn’t going to get a better image than I had already taken.

So I packed everything up, said goodbye to my friends and headed home.

Now of course, being the creative type, there’s no way I could go to bed without taking a look at my images.  So I fired up my laptop, inserted the XQD card and took a look.

For having to shoot through some thin cloud cover I didn’t think they turned out too bad. Would have loved to had crystal clear skies to really get a sharp image but I’m still happy with what I came home with.

Four hours later, my alarm went off and it was back to the daily grind.

Today it will be a battle to stay awake  but I don’t regret for a moment going out in the bitter cold, burning the midnight oil and witnessing one of natures miracles with friends.

Gear used to create this image:

Nikon D850: https://amzn.to/2PQTcrs

Nikon 200-500mm f5.6: https://amzn.to/2ScAsiS