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.
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
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.
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 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 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 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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
