Partial Lunar Eclipse of August 27, 2026

Last night, most of the United States (weather permitting, of course) was treated to a partial lunar eclipse. I confess that I didn’t have high hopes for this event. Any time I hear of a partial eclipse, I am usually a little nonplussed. Shame on me: this event was definitely worth seeing. I did not expect for it to be as enjoyable as it was.

My intrepid 1962 Questar and Canon EOS M200 camera captured the event photographically.

My one challenge was getting decent exposures when the Moon was rather close to the horizon during its maximum partial eclipse at 9:12 pm local time:

Before long, the sliver of illumination’s growth began to become apparent. A dozen minutes later at 9:24 pm:

As the Earth’s shadow began to recede and become less blood red, I began to take two exposures, one for the umbral region of the Moon’s disk and another for its illuminated area.

9:42 pm:

10:02 pm:

10:15 pm:

There reached a point where the Moon’s umbral region was too small to be worth photographing. At 10:32 pm, I shot my last exposure before calling it an evening:

The main show was over before 11 pm.

One thing I love seeing is an explosion of stars during maximum eclipse. As the Moon brightened, all of those stars disappeared as the glare washed out the night sky.