To end this otherwise very busy weekend — we had the kids visiting from Seattle — we enjoyed a couple of hours of fairly quiet skywatching.
We were treated to a total Lunar Eclipse, and whereas that's not a terribly rare occurrence, it's still pretty cool to witness. This is what is known as a "Blood Moon," and this particular event was visible from pretty much all of North and South America, as well as the British Isles and Northern Scandinavia.
I don't have any professional camera gear designed to take photos of a dark sky, so I did the best I could, with what I have. My gear is really better suited to take close-ups of bugs and flowers!
This first one was taken at around 8:30PM Pacific, right before the total eclipse started; just a small sliver of light still shows:
The total eclipse (meaning that the Moon is completely darkened by the shadow cast by the Earth) actually lasted slightly over an hour.
This next one was taken a few minutes after maximum totality, at around 9:16PM.
At this point, the Moon is just a pale red and barely visible disc in the sky; the above photo require a four second exposure to show up as well as it does.
As we stood outside and watched, it does what people thought about such events before there was a rudimentary understanding of astronomy and the movement of heavenly objects. I can totally appreciate how the term "blood moon" came about...
For this next one, we move forward to about 10:05PM, or some 20 minutes after the end of totality.
At first glance, you might think it looks a lot like a typical waxing Moon phase... but what's different here is that the entire Moon is still clearly visible because we're actually at a full Moon phase right now. The darker part is not in complete "night," it is merely in the shadow of the Earth.
With an "Umbral Magnitude" (extent of darkening) of 1.195, this will be the strongest Lunar eclipse till May of 2022.
We're grateful that we had a clear night for this heavenly event! Here in Western Washington, clear skies in mid-winter are not all that common.
With
Thanks for reading!
How about YOU? Did you watch the Lunar Eclipse this evening? Get any good photos? Are you interested in astronomy and "heavenly events," in general? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190121 00:04 PST
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