Super Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse - September 2015

 This video was created by taking a series of 53 stills at about 5 minute intervals through an Olympus E510 DSLR at the prime focus of my 120 mm f/5 refractor in Waterford, VT. Exposures ranged from about 1/2000 sec for the brightest full moon to 2 sec for totality. The images were aligned and rotated, and adjusted for brightness and contrast. 

The telescope mount lost its calibration near the middle of totality, and I didn't dare take the time to re-calibrate; thus some of the long-exposure images ended up a bit blurry.

Notice that the angles of the shadow at the start of the eclipse and at the end of the eclipse differ. Most of the motion is due to the moon moving through the shadow of the earth, and the diameter of the earth's shadow is about 4 times larger than the moon. The moon did not pass through the middle of the shadow - if you think of the shadow as a clock face, then the moon entered the shadow at about "2:30" on the face (edge of shadow almost vertical) and left the shadow at about "7:00" on the face (edge of shadow almost horizontal). This off-center trajectory also led to the bright glow around the lower edge of the moon during totality. (Bill Vinton)
​