While much of Northern Virginia was shrouded in clouds for last weekend’s total lunar eclipse, I was fortunate enough to be under the crystal clear skies of South Texas. The trip had been planned months in advance to align two of my passions: rockets and the night sky. And what a trip it was.
For those unfamiliar with the goings-on along the beach outside of Brownsville, Texas, it is the R&D site for SpaceX where they are currently building their new Starship rocket. Starship has been selected as the human landing system for NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions to the moon.
Due to a quirk in the geography, the main road running through the SpaceX site (named Starbase) is open to the public as long as there is no testing going on. This means you can get within about 70 feet of the Starship prototypes and about 500 feet of the launch pad. I thought this would be a great opportunity to get some shots of the eclipsed moon with an interesting foreground. My equipment for this trip included two cameras (Sony A7C and A6300) and two main lenses (Sony 200-600 mm with 1.4x teleconverter and Tamron 28-200mm).
Check out the gallery below with the results!
