Blood moon calls weary out into cool of night
- John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
- November 11, 2022
- 623
It was the end of the workday, and my co-worker Stacey headed for the outside world with the customary “See you tomorrow” and “Have a good night.” Just before hitting the door, however, she stopped and added, “And don’t forget the Blood Moon total eclipse tomorrow morning from 5:17-6:42 a.m. It’s the last one for three years.”
I chuckled at the precision of the announcement, but at the same time, I appreciated it. Although I’m positive she didn’t intend it as a challenge, I immediately took Stacey’s words as a call to action and stopped what I was doing to set my phone alarm accordingly. If there was something that big going down in the sky, I was going to do my best to catch it.
I’m as much a fan of daylight as anyone, and I happily thrive in the long days of summer. The deep dive into evening darkness precipitated by the dual scourges of the earth’s tilt as we close upon the winter solstice and the chronological machinations of man as we “fall back” each year to Eastern Standard Time combine to drive me half batty. The only effective way I’ve found to keep the balance of my brain from falling into the abyss is to embrace the little gifts of the night.
Late October, the sponsor of the world’s greatest sunsets, brings with it one spectacular show after another. Circling bats and chimney swifts add a bit of icing on the cake of the season while the constellation Orion arrives to light the candles. A great horned owl hollered to us the other night from its haunt in some unseen tree, and you can’t drive down a country road without dodging an opossum or raccoon. If October can’t teach you to embrace the night, there’s little hope you’ll learn beyond that, and you’ll fight the dark for the rest of the season.
Something as rare and wonderful as a lunar eclipse is an added bonus for those of us who, for survival’s sake, have learned to make the most of the night. I was up and out in the predawn with camera in hand and dog at my side with a half-hour to spare before the moon slipped fully into the shadow of the earth.
The Blood Moon hung like a ghost fire in the western sky. And from my vantage point just outside my own back door, it appeared to settle for a time along a low limb of my black walnut tree to roll slowly toward the trunk.
Shooting the moon (in the literal sense) can be more complex than one might imagine. During a “normal” full moon, the eye of the camera can be easily overpowered by what is, as every school kid knows, the direct reflection of the sun. It’s easy to end up with a white-hot circle at the center of your photo and little more. During an eclipse, with the moon lit only by the diffused red and yellow remnants of the sun’s rays as they pass through the atmosphere from the lit side of the planet, a whole new mix of settings and techniques comes into play.
My simple strategy of “snapping a million shots with a million different settings” payed off with one or two keepers — something to show the folks at work and something for which to be thankful for the night.
For comments about this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.