Blackfoot – The Amazing Sky

August was a fine month for eclipse chasing, ending with the last major lunar eclipse for many years — and a trip to catch it from a scenic site.

Two eclipses in two weeks! On August 12, 2026 I was in Spain to see the total eclipse of the Sun. My report on that successful expedition with the Capture the Atlas tour group is here.

Two weeks later, on August 27, the alignment of Sun, Earth and Moon was still in effect, producing a major eclipse of the Moon. The Full Moon passed into the Earth’s dark shadow, called the umbra, turning the Moon deep red.

Solar and lunar eclipses always come in pairs, two weeks apart. But the lunars associated with a total solar eclipse are usually either barely visible penumbral or minor partial eclipses. Having a major lunar eclipse paired with a total solar is rare, and seeing both is even rarer.

Nov. 23, 2003 total solar eclipse over Antarctica

I had to look back to November 2003 for when I last saw a total lunar eclipse and a total solar eclipse two weeks apart. And I had to travel to the ends of the Earth for a flight over Antarctica to see the latter.

However, as the chart below illustrates, the August 27 lunar eclipse was not total. At mid-eclipse about 4% of the Moon’s disk remained outside the umbra and still bright white, as that northern part of the Moon was still seeing the Sun in the lunar sky, albeit partially eclipsed by Earth.

During solar eclipses the Sun must be 100% covered to be total and to reveal all the wonders of a total solar eclipse. A 99% partial is not good enough; it is arguably just 1% of the experience.

But in a lunar eclipse, a 96% partial (as it was on August 27) is close enough to being total to show most of the effects of full total eclipse (i.e. a red Moon) that appears when 100% of the Moon is immersed in the dark umbra. So this was almost as good as a total and well worth a chase.

Picking the Site

All charts courtesy EclipseWise.com. Thank you Fred!! Click on the image to take you there.

Lunar eclipses can be seen from the half of the Earth where it is night – the white and grey zones in the map above for this eclipse. While I could have watched the August 27 eclipse from home, I decided to “chase,” not so much to seek a clear hole in clouds this time, but to seek out a scenic foreground for wide-angle shots.

I had a few sites in mind in southern Alberta. Leading up to eclipse day, forecasts consistently showed Waterton Lakes National Park in the extreme southwest corner of the province as having clear skies on eclipse night. What was worrying was the now-ever-present smoke of summer, from forest fires in B.C. and Montana. Would it be clear, but murky?

Nothing ventured …. So I headed south to Waterton hoping for the best. Upon arriving in the afternoon the sky was cloudy, but that was as forecast. Clearing wasn’t supposed to happen until the evening.

And it did! I arrived on site before moonrise to now mostly clear skies, to set up my observing gear for the evening: two telescopes — a 120mm refractor to shoot through and a 90mm refractor to look through, and a MSM Nomad tracker with a camera for wide-angle shots and a panorama with the Milky Way at mid-eclipse.

My eclipse site by day, the day after the eclipse.

The site was one I knew well from previous visits. It is the Maskinonge viewpoint on the prairie overlooking the wetlands below, and with a view toward the Rocky Mountains and peaks around the Waterton townsite to the south.

The site is a sacred place to the local Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot) people who have performed annual rituals here for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The Full Moon tonight was the litamatapapittssko Moon — the “Moon when leaves change colour.” Below is an illustration of all 13 Blackfoot Moons, in a display at the Waterton Lakes Visitor Centre.

But tonight the Moon itself was going to change colour.

Shooting the Eclipse

The Moon rose amid retreating horizon cloud, but soon cleared the cloud bank for telescopic close-ups with the initial partial phase underway. (Click or tap on images to bring them up full screen.)

The partial lunar eclipse with the Moon rising in eclipse. In a single 1/5th second exposure with the Askar AP120 telescope at its native f/7 focal ratio for 840mm focal length, and with the Canon R5 at ISO 200.

The rising Full Moon had a dark bite taken out of its bright disk, a bite that would grow larger as the Moon entered more deeply into the umbra.

The Full Moon in partial eclipse rising over Maskinonge Pond. In a blend of two exposures: a long 3.2-second untracked exposure for the sky and ground, blended with a short 1/4-second exposure for the Moon. Both with the RF15-35mm lens at f/2.8 and 35mm, on the Canon R at ISO 200.

The scene with the partially eclipsed Moon casting a golden “glitter path” onto the water made for a striking scene I hadn’t planned on. But the wide lens (at 35mm) nicely captured the view and the iridescent clouds around the Moon.

As the Moon entered more deeply into the umbra the moonlight diminished and what would have been a bright moonlit night turned dark with the summer Milky Way revealed to the west over Vimy Peak.

This is a 180º panorama taking in the red eclipsed Moon, at left, and the Milky Way and galactic core, at right, over the Maskinonge wetlands in Waterton Lakes National Park. All exposures for both ground and sky were 30 seconds at f/2.8 with the Canon RF15-35mm lens at 24mm, on the astro-modified Canon R at ISO 6400. The Moon comes from a blend of 8 shorter tracked exposures.

This was the panorama I was after and that dictated the site.

It is a blend of exposures taken near mid-eclipse about 10:15 pm MDT — untracked for the ground, tracked for the sky, plus shorter exposures for the Moon’s disk itself, to better portray the scene as the eye saw it. As good as today’s cameras are, they still cannot record the high dynamic range of brightness of a lunar, or solar, eclipse. Shooting and blending multiple exposures is still required.

I had to make last-minute changes to settings, opting to shoot at a much higher ISO (6400) than I normally would, to keep exposures short (30 seconds each for the main ground and sky segments), due to Waterton’s infamous winds buffeting the camera. The wind was calm for most of the evening, but of course picked up at mid-eclipse!

Mid-eclipse in a blend of 7 exposures from 1/8-second to 8-seconds with the Canon R5 at ISO 100, on the Askar APO120 refractor at its native f/7 for 840mm focal length.

Having shot the panorama, I turned my attention to the telescope, which I had been using over the previous hour and a half to shoot close-ups of the ever-increasing partial eclipse.

But I wanted a set taken close to mid-eclipse. Again, the great range of brightness from the sunlit side to the shadowed Moon called for a range of exposures, seven in this case (what the Canon R5 camera can shoot automatically), from 8 seconds down to 1/8 second.

The longest exposure picked up the faint stars of Aquarius surrounding the Moon, with Sigma Aquarii at lower left the brightest; it was obvious in the eyepiece of the visual telescope. That scope showed the subtle blue-grey tint along the edge of the Earth’s shadow, from sunlight filtering through the ozone layer in our upper atmosphere.

This is a composite illustrating the passage of the Full Moon through the northern portion of Earth’s umbral shadow. The sequence runs from right to left, as the Moon moved west to east through the shadow and against the background stars of Aquarius.

I kept shooting with the telescope, to capture the final partial phases. I wasn’t so ambitious as to shoot every few seconds for a time-lapse. I did that at a similar eclipse in September 2015 and the result is here on YouTube.

This time I shot enough frames to create the composite above, showing the progress of the Moon through the umbra, as it moved from west to east against the stars, right to left here with north up.

As a result the Moon “draws” Earth’s large circular umbral shadow it is moving through. The effect was particularly pronounced at this eclipse, with the Moon passing along a chord across the northern portion of the umbra, which out at the Moon’s distance is three times the diameter of the Moon, as you can see above.

A deep total eclipse with the Moon moving through the centre of the umbra would not have been as effective at revealing the circular shape of the umbra in such a composite. I was glad to have had clear skies this night! Because …

When is the Next Eclipse?

The next such “red Moon” (a full total eclipse) is not until December 31, 2028. But we don’t see it well from Alberta, as the Moon sets at dawn just as totality begins. Eastern North America sees nothing of that coming eclipse; Asia and Australia are the favoured areas to see it (in white below) on New Year’s Day, January 1, 2029.

The Americas are poorly placed for the next total lunar eclipse.

Then, as shown below, we have a run of two more total lunars six months apart in 2029: on June 26 and December 20. But neither of those is well-placed for western Canada. As the charts below show, locations much farther east are the places to be.

For my area, the next major lunar eclipse, a total, that we see well in its entirety, is not until October 8, 2033 (as below). Another seven years!

There’s a “tetrad” of four total lunars in a row in 2032-33, but we in western Canada see only the last in the series, charted here.

We’ve been spoiled of late, with a string of total lunars in recent years visible from here — just in the last 18 months we’ve had two: on March 3, 2026 (shot from home), and on March 14, 2025, which was another Waterton eclipse I blogged about here.

The other links below will take you to my reports on earlier lunar eclipse adventures, as most have required a chase to find clear skies on cloudy winter, spring and autumn nights. The August 2026 event was the first summer (i.e. warm!) lunar eclipse I’d seen since 2007.

But for my area we are entering a seven-year lunar eclipse drought, with the eastern hemisphere about to have their turn enjoying the coming lunars.

A self-portrait of the triumphant eclipse chaser. In a single 8-second exposure at f/2.8 with the RF15-35mm lens at 15mm on the Canon R at ISO 6400.

Just like total solar eclipses, seeing a total lunar eclipse before 2033 (at least for me) will require travel to far off locations. I’m willing to chase some, but not all, total solars. I’m not so sure about total lunars!

So this might have been my last deep red Moon for quite a while. But it was a good one with which to end my lunar eclipse chases … for now!

— Alan, September 1, 2026 / amazingsky.com

This is not a picture of the amazing sky but a document of what the sky can do when it decides to be merciless.

No one has seen anything like this in living memory, with homes under water and the river swollen to a lake engulfing the Bow River Valley.

These panoramas depict the heart of the Siksika First Nation, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. It was in this valley, where the Blackfoot had traditionally held their summer camps, that Treaty 7 was signed in 1877 between Chief Crowfoot and James Macleod of the NWMP. The history of the area is presented at the beautiful Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park interpretive centre, shown in the image below. We’ve held several popular public stargazing sessions there. It was closed today, ironically due to a lack of safe water.

It was here at this spot in the Bow River Valley that nomadic hunters could easily cross the river. Up to this weekend a bridge, seen in the distance in the image below, had allowed modern travellers to make the crossing. But no more. The bridge is closed and may never reopen, until it is rebuilt. Today, water was roaring just below the bridge deck. And waters have receded in the last 24 hours.

There is some fear that a ferry downstream, the Crowfoot Ferry, one of the last river ferries in Alberta, might break loose and crash into the Bassano Dam.

Dozens of homes are underwater and hundreds of people displaced to evacuation shelters. The water came up so fast many people had just minutes to get out.

Those I spoke to today, including one 68-year-old resident, said they have never seen the Bow flood as bad as this. The high waters, having breached the Carseland Dam upstream from here, are now heading downstream to fill the Bassano Dam and flood the lower Bow and South Saskatchewan River through Medicine Hat. As those upstream clean up, those downstream prepare for the onslaught of water.