Stunning images of ‘blood moon’ bring rare sight to light
It was a race against the clouds.
Photographer Patrick Coyne, of Torrance, knew the clouds were rolling in, threatening his chance of getting the epic shot of the “blood moon,” a phenomenon that happened in the early-morning hours of Tuesday, March 3.
“I was looking at weather maps, it looked like it was going to be fine in the South Bay,” said the sleepless South Bay native Tuesday morning, fueling up on a breakfast burrito following his all-nighter. “It kind of changed drastically, all of a sudden there were a lot more clouds that wanted to roll in.”
So at 3 a.m., Coyne knew he had to quickly change spots from near his home in Torrance to a small pocket in Redondo Beach that, on the weather maps, looked like it would be clear enough for the massive moon to show its beauty.
According to NASA, lunar eclipses occur at the full moon phase. When Earth is positioned precisely between the moon and sun, Earth’s shadow falls upon the surface of the moon, dimming it and sometimes turning the lunar surface a striking red over the course of a few hours.
The same phenomenon that makes our sky blue and our sunsets red causes the moon to turn reddish-orange during a lunar eclipse. During a lunar eclipse, the moon appears red or orange because any sunlight that’s not
blocked by our planet is filtered through a thick slice of Earth’s atmosphere on its way to the lunar surface.
“It’s as if all the world’s sunrises and sunsets are projected onto the moon,” NASA says.
Coyne, 31, has photographed “blood moons” several times through the years, recounting his images about a decade ago as “terrible.”
“It’s fun, it’s kind of a challenge to photograph because it gets pretty dim. Every time there’s an opportunity to photograph it, I like to try because I think it’s amazing, and I want to get better at it,” he said.
He arrived in Redondo Beach at 3:18 a.m., just enough to catch the peak of the eclipse at 3:33 a.m., shooting for about 45 minutes.
He used an 8HD Nexstar telescope (2032mm focal length), paired with his Sony A7S III, a camera that he frequently uses to capture nature images from whales off the coast to bioluminescence in the waves.
“I absolutely love photographing things in nature, it’s one of my absolute favorite things to do,” Coyne said. “I think it’s so important for us to get out there and see these things, even if it’s super early in the morning. It’s important for me to not take it for granted, and I love being able to share it with people who don’t have the ability to see it. So if you do have the ability to, I always recommend going out and seeing it with your own eyes.”
The next total lunar eclipse will happen in late 2028.