Having no idea where to place this, I’ve randomly selected MPSIMS. Mods, please move if necessary.
So, who watched tonight’s total lunar eclipse? We had beautiful clear skies here in North Central Washington, so my view was unimpeded as I spent an hour at work standing around outside watching the moon disappear, instead of working.
Pretty cool. Somehow, this is the first one of these I’ve seen in my nearly 42 years. Still never seen a solar eclipse. We had one when I was in grade school, I think, but my younger sister remembers that the school put black paper on all the windows and kept everybody inside. I suppose so that the evil dragon devouring the sun wouldn’t spot us wee children and decide to devour us as well.
We did. We walked our dogs over to the field of the elementary school across the street, where we got a good view. It was pretty hazy though. I had a better view when I came home and the moon was clear - but that was about 30 minutes before totality.
When I was 8 I got a golden book about the moon, which had a list of eclipse from about that time to far into the future - 1964. And I’ve seen two solar eclipses, on in NY and one when I was in college in Cambridge. We all went up to the roof of the dorm, six stories up, to watch.
I totally forgot about it, then got on the phone with a friend. She reminded me, and I could see it out my window. It was very cool, but I was more focused on talking to my friend.
Was a crystal clear evening here, though a tad nippy for standing around outside at -16C. I only went out a few minutes before totality, but I got some decent pictures. To get the neat sequences you sometimes see I’d have had to have gone out rather earlier, though.
We got a nice clear view but it was insanely cold so we only caught a glimpse here and there. I’d seen lunar eclipses before, and in Junior High we got to see a near total solar eclipse. Our school was much more scientific about it than the OP’s tho–we weren’t allowed outside to look at it but there were neat eclipse viewing stations at most windows. They set up paper with pinholes against the windows and where the circle of light hit the wall you could see it get eaten up like the sun. It was cool.
I did, for once it wasn’t cloudy.
A light haze still made it not so good for staring at with a telescope, but it was awful pretty in an eerie way.
The moon seemed darker than in the last few eclipses I’ve seen, and not as red, more an orangey yellow. Saturn and Regulus set off the pale orb nicely.
I’m not sure what time it was happening, but when I got out of class (around 9:00 PM in Chicago), the moon looked reddish and smoky and about half of it (the left half) was in darker red shadow. I don’t know if I saw it coming or going, but it was very pretty.
And then the train came, and I forgot to look for it again when I got home. Ah, well.
I went out and smoked a cigarette and watched for however long that takes. After that my inner caveman got worried and wanted to sacrifice something so I just went back inside.
Good luck with that.
I took some with a tripod and they weren’t nearly as good as I expected. I tried all different shutter speeds and settings but in the end I still overexposed the ones that had slower shutter times and it ended up washing out the part that was still lit.
It was damn cold here last night and I was out in my slippers and jammies trying to snap shots till my fingers were too numb to work the camera. I think it was -5 degrees.
