A photographer's journey to capture a blood moon rising over the South China Sea. 'It was an incredible moment'

Planning, uncertainty, a last-minute road trip and elation in the battle against cloud cover. Malaysian photographer Tharuman Gnanamoorthy set off on a personal mission to capture the March 3 Blood Moon total lunar eclipse.

Gnanamoorthy's stunning composite photos document the mesmerizing beauty of the orange-red full moon as it rose fully eclipsed over the eastern coast of Malaysia, along with the waning partial phases that followed as Earth's shadow slipped from its ancient surface. They represent the culmination of weeks of planning, skill and luck, which may never have come to fruition had a single decision fallen the wrong way.

"This eclipse was a particularly meaningful experience for me, shaped as much by the challenges on the ground as by the celestial event itself," Gnanamoorthy told Space.com in an email. The weeks leading up to the event had seen Gnanamoorthy rehearsing the workflow for his dual-imaging setup from his home in the Seremban region of the Malay Peninsula, where he works as a paediatrician.

Gnanamoorthy kept a watchful eye on the weather forecast as the eclipse drew closer, tracking cloud fronts that could make or break his expedition. "At one point, I even experimented with trying to "train" my Seestar S50 to detect the moon through cloud cover — an attempt that, unsurprisingly, proved futile," lamented Gnanamoorthy.

He had initially planned to pack up his equipment and embark on a 280-mile (450-kilometer) trip north to the western coastal city of Alor Setar in the state of Kedah, after using Google Earth and Photopills to meticulously plan the shoot.

His goal was to capture the blood moon as it rose fully immersed in Earth's shadow at sunset on March 3, as our planet passed between the sun and moon during the climactic phase of the total lunar eclipse. During this phase, also known as totality, light filtered by Earth's atmosphere would be bent onto the lunar disk, turning it a bloody red hue.

As the day of the eclipse dawned, the weather over Alor Setar deteriorated, forcing Gnanamoorthy to abandon his original plan in favor of a new destination on the eastern shoreline of the peninsula, close to the city of Kota Bharu, 310 miles (500 km) to the north. With luck, he would find a spot with a clear view of the moon as it rose, eclipsed over the South China Sea, and hope that clouds didn't arrive to ruin the show.

"Faced with this uncertainty, I made a last-minute decision to drive across the country," recalled Gnanamoorthy. "The journey took more than seven hours, cutting across the peninsula with little room for delay. I needed to arrive before sunset to scout for a suitable location and set up my equipment."

Gnanamoorthy would use a Sony A7 III mirrorless camera paired with a 300 mm telephoto lens and a Seestar S50 smart telescope to capture the scene. The mirrorless camera was used to snap bracketed exposures — where the same scene is imaged with a variety of exposure durations — while the smart telescope was tasked with capturing RAW footage of the eclipse.

"I eventually settled on a stretch of coastline at Pantai Pak Amat, just outside Kota Bharu, with a clear eastern horizon over the South China Sea," explained Gnanamoorthy. "Conditions were not perfect — low clouds still hugged the horizon — but they were far more promising than those on the west coast."

Gnanamoorthy waited alone on the deserted beach as the appointed moment of moonrise came and went, hidden behind an impenetrable barrier of cloud that had settled low on the horizon.

Emotions rose as the fleeting phase of totality continued to ebb away with the moon lost from sight behind a veil of clouds. Finally, a little over 30 minutes after moonrise, the clouds parted, revealing the lunar disk as it passed through the deepest section of our planet's shadow, while bathed in the orange-red light of every sunrise and sunset on Earth.

"It was an incredible moment," recounted Gnanamoorthy. "For a brief instant, I simply stood there, stunned. Then instinct took over. I moved quickly between both systems, following the imaging workflow I had rehearsed."

The payoff was spectacular.

Gnanamoorthy combined the bracketed images captured using the Sony A7III with footage from the Seestar S50 in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom to create gorgeous compositions that chronicled the blood moon's transformation from rusty crimson back to its usual silvery lustre.

"One unexpected aspect of the experience came afterward," said Gnanamoorthy. "I later discovered that Pantai Pak Amat is historically significant — it marks the landing site of Japanese forces in Malaya on December 8, 1941. I returned the following morning to photograph the monument, along with the rising Milky Way core above the same coastline."

Inspired to begin your own astrophotography journey? Then be sure to read our guides to imaging the lunar surface and capturing the night sky. Don't forget to also peruse our roundups of the best cameras and lenses available in 2026 if you're new to photography, or simply want to upgrade your equipment.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.