Less Than Desirable Timing For October Lunar Eclipse

The timing of this lunar eclipse did not fit well into my morning schedule as did the previous eclipse last April. The lunar eclipse of Wednesday, October 8, 2014 began around 4:00 AM CDT and achieved totality just after 5:00 AM. This conflicted with my getting ready for and going to work. Indeed, I had a lovely copper-colored, fully eclipsed moon to view through my windshield on the way to work. The image above is a combination of the foreground, a 1.3-second exposure at f/4.5, 2000 ISO and 18mm focal length, captured at 4:27 AM, and the moon (itself a combination of two images) shot at 4:54 AM. This image looks west from White Road, just west of North Marion Road, about four miles north of Marion, Iowa.