While people were capturing total lunar eclipse from earth, an European Space Agency astronaut named Alexander Gerst photographed the eclipse from space station.
He was nearly 250 miles above from earth while taking images of the moon eclipse. He shared a few pictures of lunar eclipse including others image that he snapped prior to the eclipse.
Astronauts on the space station see the moon many times per day because they orbit Earth about once every 90 minutes. It helps that their viewing platform is far above any clouds.
Gerst trained on Earth to use all the photo gear at the space station before he launched into orbit.
On July 27, 2018 — when the moon was eclipsed by Earth's shadow — Gerst was ready. The core of the planet's shadow, called the umbra, colored the moon red because of the way Earth's atmosphere refracts the sun's light.
The moon was in totality (fully shadowed by the umbra) for nearly an hour and 43 minutes. Views during the partial eclipse, when the moon is in Earth's outer shadow, or penumbra, were equally haunting.
Gerst managed to snap a handful of pictures before the blood moon wrapped up. "Caught the moon leaving Earth's core shadow, just before setting over the South Atlantic," Gerst said of this photo. "Last photo of the lunar eclipse taken from ISS."
When he's not shooting a lunar eclipse, the German astronaut likes to photograph long shadows cast by cloud formations below him.