Super Moon and Blood Moon

Unless you were living under a rock, you are pretty much all aware of the unusual circumstances for the full moon on September 27.  Not only was it a super moon, there was going to be a total eclipse turning it into the red blood moon too.  The next one like this won't happen till something like 2033.

It was going to start a little after 9 and peak about 11.  I was sooo tired and I didn't feel like dragging out the tripod and all that.  I just wanted to go to bed.  While I did check it out a few times to see the phases, I didn't feel like shooting them.  It was kinda cool to see how bright my yard was at 8:30 and then get progressively darker every time I looked outside. I wrote as my status that there was no way I was going to stay awake that late.  One of my friends commented, in all caps no less, that I should get my butt out there and shoot the damn thing.  The way she worded it made me laugh, so I was like, 'FINE!' but it came out like 'FINE-AH'.  

I grabbed the tripod from the other room, attached the zoom lens, screwed the camera onto the tripod head, a flashlight and my new cable shutter release and went outside.  

OK so it was getting pretty cool.  I'd already done night time photography adjustments in the manual settings so I went out there and started messing around with exposure times.  

I should've written down each exposure time.  I did 1, 2, 3 and 4 seconds; a couple were longer.  The first pic was taken at 10:24 pm, the last at 10:29.

Despite my best efforts and a much easier to see object, I just couldn't get the focus quite right.  But the cable shutter release is a godsend.  I haven't been able to effectively shoot on the bulb setting no matter how still I thought I was standing.  Even when it was on the tripod, just pressing down the shutter was enough to shake the camera.  

While I was waiting for the red to take over more, I tried some shots of the stars but they were all pretty bad because of the focus problem.  I'll have to work on that more.

I decided I'd had about enough and wanted to go inside.  I adjusted the focus one last time and snapped what is probably the best picture I've ever taken in my life.  Not only is the moon crisp, the stars look great too.  I entered it in NASA's photo contest but I don't really hold out any hope of winning based on the volume of submissions.