The third tetrad moon of four has been captured.
I started this series of images back in April of 2014 when the first blood moon occurred. And the second happened last October. I’ve learned a lot since those two blood moons and I put that knowledge to good use earlier this month when the northern hemisphere was treated to the third tetrad blood moon on April 4th.
Video courtesy of Space.com
This third tetrad was not slated to start until the wee hours of the morning, so I took a power nap before getting up at 1 a.m to venture out in Joshua Tree National Park alone under the light of the full moon. Not wanting to venture too far off the trail considering I was carry double the equipment this time out, I went to a location I knew well, Hidden Valley.
You’re probably wondering why I was carrying double the gear. Well this time I planned to include the landscape into my final image. So I set my newer camera (since it has better ISO capabilities) up on the tripod to capture the landscape. And then with my older camera, again on a tripod, I had my telephoto lens zoomed in to capture just the moon. So there I sat in gradual darkness for four hours, capturing images every five minutes with my intervalometer on both cameras. I ended up with 115 images between the two cameras once the shoot was over.
Now comes the magic, bringing it all together in post-processing. What took me four hours in the field capturing, took me about 5 hours in the digital darkroom creating my final image. My first step was to select the moons I would use for the sequencing of the lunar eclipse. Then I lined up those slightly enlarged moons with the landscape layers for accurate placement. My final task was selecting the one landscape image I would use as my base.
I debated between using an image where the light of the full moon made the landscape clearly visible or an image where the stars shined brightly because the earth was blocking the light from the sun. As you can see from my final composite here, I went with the dark of the landscapes. And the glow from the Coachella Valley backlights the joshua tree in the distance rather nicely.
Now that this tetrad moon is in the history books, I can begin planning for the next lunar eclipse, four of four tetrads happening on September 28th.
Did you get to see the lunar eclipse where you live?
[full_width_color bg_color=”#0697cc” color=”#ffffff”]xoxo, Patricia[/full_width_color]