Blood Moon – 2026

Waiheke News Location
News Date 3-4 March 2026
News Time 11PM-1AM
Camera Type 5D Mark III

News Overview

The yheke team is happy to bring you our first news story.

The rare phenomenon is the Blood Moon of 2026. Which only occurs every 2-3 years. The technical name for a blood moon is a Total Lunar Eclipse. A total lunar eclipse happens when the Earth blocks all the Sun’s light from reaching the Moon directly or when the moon earth and sun are in a line. It can only happen during a full Moon. During an eclipse, Earth casts two types of shadows the penumbra and the umbra.

The moon moved into the larger shadow (penumbra) at 9:45pm before entering the smaller shadow (umbra) at 11pm. This is where it will start to turn red, with the Blood Moon at its most striking red hue just past midnight when it falls completely into the umbral shadow. The Moon turns red, rather than disappearing, because of the way light interacts with the atmosphere.

The next blood moon is scheduled to occur in 2028.

We have attached a diagram below as astronomy can be confusing – Credit to NASA

Our Setup

Our setup location was in central Ostend at about 10:30pm. With the tripod, Cannon 5D camera and a 600mm lense. Taking photos from 11:00pm till 1am. Over that time we tried many camera settings, adjusting shutter speeds, aperture and iso. With mixed results. We found you could not have too longer shutter speed as the moons position changes over the time of the photo. But also could not crank the iso too high as it was a night shot. So ended up on about a 2 second shutter speed, with a 800-1600 ISO.

Will attach some of the photos below.

Gallery

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