Enter any location on Earth to see every upcoming lunar eclipse visible there over the next 15 years, with the Moon actually above the horizon — whether it's a barely-there penumbral eclipse, a partial one with a dark bite out of the disc, or a full “blood moon” totality. For each one you get the local start/peak/end times of every phase, how far the Moon enters Earth's umbra, the Moon's altitude and compass direction at maximum, and the local moonrise and moonset times so you know whether it clears your horizon. Free, no account required.
“Visible” here means the Moon is mathematically above the horizon during the eclipse — it doesn't account for local terrain, buildings, or cloud cover blocking your specific view.
By Robert Bridgewater · Last updated
The good news first: unlike a solar eclipse, a lunar eclipse is completely safe to look at and photograph with the naked eye, binoculars, or any lens — no filter, no special precautions. The hard part is purely photographic: the Moon's brightness drops by many thousands of times between the full Moon and totality, and it never stops moving.
The uneclipsed full Moon is a sunlit rock in daylight. Start near the “Looney 11” rule — f/11, shutter 1/ISO (so 1/100s at ISO 100) — and adjust from there. It is much brighter than people expect.
Now the frame holds a bright uneclipsed limb and a dim umbral part at the same time — a huge dynamic range no single exposure covers. Bracket widely, and expect to open up by several stops every ten or fifteen minutes as the umbra advances.
The Moon is now 10,000–100,000× fainter and glowing red. Typical starting point: a wide aperture, ISO 800–3200, and shutter speeds from a fraction of a second to a few seconds. Bracket — the colour and brightness vary from one eclipse to the next depending on the state of Earth's atmosphere.
The Moon crosses roughly its own diameter every two minutes. On a fixed tripod at a long focal length, exposures longer than a second or two will visibly smear it — so during totality you are choosing between pushing ISO to keep the shutter short, or putting the camera on a star tracker. At shorter focal lengths, or with the Moon small in a landscape frame, this matters much less.
A long telephoto (300–600mm+) fills the frame with the coppery disc and its surface detail; totality is also the only time the Moon is dim enough to record stars right next to it. A shorter lens leaves room for a horizon — which is exactly what the Moon altitude and compass direction shown for each eclipse above are for. An eclipse that lines up with moonrise or moonset puts a low, red Moon directly over a landmark, a ridge, or the sea.
Tripod and a remote release or timer. Shoot RAW — white balance during totality is a judgement call you want to make later, not on the night. Manual focus on the Moon's edge and check it again once it darkens. And there is no need to rush: the partial phases alone run well over an hour on each side, and totality itself can last more than an hour — nothing like the few minutes a total solar eclipse gives you.
A lunar eclipse is Earth's own shadow falling on the full Moon. That shadow has two parts: a dark central umbra, where the Earth blocks the Sun completely, wrapped in a lighter penumbra, where it blocks it only partly. How deep the Moon goes into the umbra decides whether you see a faint shading, a dark bite out of the disc, or a fully eclipsed “blood moon”.
Which of these you get depends entirely on how far the Moon slides into the umbra — the percentage shown for each eclipse above.
A total solar eclipse is only total along a path a few hundred kilometres wide, for a few minutes, and you almost certainly have to travel to it. A total lunar eclipse is the opposite: Earth's shadow is large and slow, so totality is visible — identically — from the entire night side of the planet at once, often for well over an hour. If the Moon is up at your location when it happens, you are already in the best seat there is. That reframes the question from “is it worth travelling for” to simply “will the sky be clear, and is the Moon high enough above my horizon” — which is what the altitude and moonrise/moonset flags on each eclipse above are for. Penumbral eclipses are listed too, but flagged honestly: the dimming is so slight that many people looking straight at one never notice it.
A lunar eclipse needs no travel and no filter — which means cloud cover on the night is very nearly the whole game. A date and an umbral percentage don't tell you whether the sky will be clear, or whether the Moon clears your horizon in time.
Cloud cover on the night
An eclipse with the Moon 40 degrees up in a clear sky is trivial; the same eclipse behind a front is nothing. Forecast accuracy only becomes reliable in the days immediately before.
Horizon and moonrise timing
When an eclipse coincides with moonrise or moonset, a ridge, treeline, or building can hide the best part of it. Worth checking the Moon's altitude and direction against your specific composition well before the night.
It is a slow event to sit through
Penumbral to penumbral runs three hours or more. Knowing which stretch is actually worth being set up for — and whether conditions hold across it — is the part a date alone doesn't give you.
ShotScout's alerts are built to track exactly this kind of time-sensitive opportunity for your saved locations, continuously, not just when you remember to check.
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