The 2025 total lunar eclipse – a.k.a. “The Blood Moon” (uhhhh) in the click-hungry media – photographed from south of Roskilde.

The original plan by driving 30 mins to see the eclipse (which I could have easily watched from home) was trying to achieve a photograph of an airplane (taking off) inside the full moon!
So, I planned my time and location – 2,4 km west of runway 29 – and crossed my fingers for a suitable departure and clear skies in the eastern horizon behind the airport.

With my 600mm Sigma lens and a 2x extender, my 1200mm of focal length combined with the selected distance should make the moon look like it was 23 meters in diameter and 400 meters above ground – in comparison with e.g., a small Cessna plane having a wing span of approx. 11 meters. Also, the altitude of 400 meters above ground should be low enough that the airplane likely wouldn’t have initiated its first turn.

My hope was to catch such a plane’s take off inside the moon’s disk – when I originally planed it, I didn’t even realise there would be a lunar eclipse, but the reddish moon would just add the dramatic scene – if I succeeded!

The time came – and passed – no moon and no planes taking off…

Finally, after waiting for a (long) while, taking test shots, moving location back-and-forth-and-back-again, I discovered the moon was already much higher up in the sky than anticipated…!
Never mind getting a perfect shot of the lunar eclipse, as the celestial objects are never good to photograph close to the horizon – except if there’s a good reason for it – like I thought I had that evening.
On the day it just turned out there were too much haze in the low atmosphere, so the moon wasn’t visible at all when it was closer down to the horizon – never mind any planes (which didn’t take off anyways).
So, to not loose the moment entirely, I started taking pictures of the moon only.

Without any tracking device and a moon which moves it’s own diameter in 2 mins, I placed the moon in one corner of the view finder, and shot away until the moon was in the diagonal corner.
To get a sharp moon not blurred due to Earth’s rotation with a 1200mm lens at f/13 I calculated the maximum exposure time to be 0,53 seconds, and set it to 0,3 seconds to be safe.

The total number of 569 subframes of 0,3 secs were then stacked to (the stacking process cancels out the random noise between the subframes which relatively emphasises the desired signal, and the result is a cleaner image).
This gives a calculated exposure time of 2:52 minutes – a much too long expose time had it been only a one shot photograph!
After the stacking produced a “master frame” which was then post-processed (developed) into the final image you see above 🙂

Although my airplane-in-fullmoon-idea was an attempting challenge, I’m not sure I will attempt it again – not in Roskilde anyways; there were simply too few take-offs to count on it again…
The orientation of the Roskilde Airport’s runway is good though – but calling the airport to ask for any departure at a specific date and time regardless of destination, seems a less thought-through idea… ‍↔️