Wesley's Tool-Box

It’s been just a few months since the last occurrence, but another total lunar eclipse took place yesterday. This one was a bit special since it coincided with the first full moon of the lunar year, which is a day of celebration called Jeongwol Daeboreum in Korea. It’s the first time that this has happened in 36 years. Naturally, I made a full preparation. iPhone 16 Pro would take wide angle timelapse, while Nikon P1000 would take zoomed-in photos of the Moon.

Unfortunately, the thick overcast clouds that had been lingering during the day refused to go away, and obscured my view of the moonrise. I nevertheless decided to stick around, and the gambit paid off somewhat. The Moon would occasionally pop out behind the clouds, allowing me to take at least some photos that would illustrate the progress of the lunar eclipse, including the totality. This was possible because the clouds had holes, allowing for windows of observation that lasted anywhere between tens of seconds to a few minutes.

After taking a few shots of the Moon with P1000, I realized that the cloud covers would prevent sufficient exposure, making the photos too dark even with a 1-second shutter speed. So I pivoted to using my iPhone 17 Pro Max instead, using its 8x zoom camera with Night Mode. It wouldn’t look as sharp as P1000, but some photos are better than none. The collection of the best shots are shown here.

Device: iPhone 17 Pro Max
Settings: 200mm equiv. - ISO 800~1600 - 5s - f/2.8
Time: 2026-03-03 19:52 ~ 22:32 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

It's been more than 2 years since a total lunar eclipse could be observed. 2025 would have two occurrences to make up for the hiatus, but the one in March took place largely in the Americas. So I was waiting for the September one. Sadly, the weather forecast was dire, with rain and clouds expected to obstruct the view. To avoid this I decided to travel to the east, and ended up booking a flight to Hiroshima, Japan.

While Hiroshima did have relatively clear skies in the early evening, it would succumb to clouds and mild thunderstorm later in the night. Still, I was able to capture the progress of the eclipse with my iPhone 16 Pro when the clouds temporarily subsided, as you can see here. A timelapse video of the entire eclipse was also captured with my iPhone 15 Pro, which has been uploaded to YouTube.

Device: iPhone 16 Pro
Settings: 120mm equiv. - ISO 640~4000 - 1/15~1/31s - f/2.8
(ISO 4000, 1/15s | ISO 1600, 1/15s | ISO 4000, 1/15s | ISO 640 1/31s)
Time: 2025-09-08 01:37 ~ 05:06 JST
Location: Hiroshima, Japan