OASI: lunar eclipse

Amid much hype from TV and social media, OASI members arranged an observing trip to the Cliff Road car park at Felixstowe to view the promised "blood red" lunar total eclipse on Sunday 07 September 2025. The observing site provided an unobstructed view of the North Sea and would enable, we hoped, observation of the eclipsed Moon rising over the eastern horizon.

Event times (UT) for the eclipse were as follows (from the BAA Handbook for 2025):

Unfortunately, despite the hype, the eclipse could not be well observed from the UK. At the Felixstowe observing site, moonrise occurred at approximately 18:24, almost 10 minutes after greatest eclipse at 18:11:43, the end of the total eclipse at 18:52:47 and the end of the partial phase at 19:56:25, with the Moon still at an altitude of only 12° (see table above for full list of event times).

In the days prior to the event the weather forecast looked promising but, as the event drew near, it looked like high cloud was going to be a problem. Potential observers agreed to decide on the Sunday afternoon, via the OASI WhatsApp group, whether the planned observation was go or no go. After a sunny start to Sunday, it became overcast by 14:00, but with the forecast for Felixstowe predicting possible clear spells by early evening, we decided to proceed.

Mandy and I arrived at the observing site at 18:00. There, we met Pete and Nikki Richards and were soon joined by other members of OASI: Neil and Lynne Morley, Martin Cook, Mike Whybray, Jack Gleed, Carl Baldwin, Katherine Ramsey and Raj Patel. In fact, the car park was full, and cars full of people lined the cliff tops in Old Felixstowe, all hoping to observe the eclipse!

Unfortunately, at this time there was much cloud, but there were also signs that a few clear breaks might appear so, in a spirit of optimism, we set up our equipment. Alas, there was just too much cloud to enable viewing totality but, shortly after 19:00, the partially eclipsed Moon began to appear between gaps in the cloud. We observed and took images until the end of the partial phase.

Image credits below are: AG=Andy Gibbs, ANM= Neil Morley, JG=Jack Gleed, MPC=Martin Cook, MW=Mike Whybray. Images in the montage of the eclipsed Moon are arranged in the following order (approximately chronological) L-R: AG 19:10, AG 19:29, JG, AG 19:38, MW, JG. Images by AG were taken with a Canon EOS 1200D camera with Sigma 70-300 lens at 300 mm with exposures between 1/125 and 2 seconds. The other observers did not record equipment details and image times.

MPC

ANM