Lunar Eclipse Feb 20

Hey all-

If you haven't heard on the news, there will be a total lunar eclipse this week!

Here in California, the moon is already quite high before the sun goes down, so early-evening viewing should be easy.

I just hope the weather is clear.

Woot!.. I'm gonna have to check this out.

I took pictures of the last eclipse, and in general was disappointed in how they came out. During totality the exposure times were long enough that the movement of the moon blurred the images, and even with a 12x zoom (equivalent to a 420mm lens on a regular 35mm camera) the moon was only filling about 20% of the frame.

I probably won't try it again unless someone (Mark? Dan?) can come up with some worthwhile suggestions.

I do have an 8" Celestron Newtonian reflector telescope, but it is bare-bones, no motor-drive or camera mount or anything. Maybe I'll just drag it out and watch things unfold and not try to photograph it.

tanstaafl.

Except it seems the storm is going to make it hard to view.

Oh dear- I think you may be right.

I took pics of the last one seen in the UK:

I need to get a good camera - Just look at my last attempt:-)

Yours are great, Furtive

Actually those look pretty damn good Frog. Furtive's are pretty awesome too. What creates that red hue?

Light refracted through the Earth's atmosphere. The same thing that makes sunsets red.

Point of fun interest: If you've ever seen a picture of a sunset from Earth orbit, you see that the Earth horizon basically looks like a bright red crescent.

Well, from the moon's point of view, during a Lunar eclipse, the entire earth looks like that: A ring of red sunset all the way around. If you were standing on the moon, a lunar eclipse must look pretty awesome.

Yes, but you'd be very cold... and oxygen starved. Best to watch from Earth.

Crap.... waaaaay too overcast to view, and I even had access to the observatory here. Oh well.

I'm quite surprised, the weather cleared just in time.

There were clouds in the east as I left work, but they really dropped and I just had a great view of Da Moon going into Da Totality.

I think this may be the last one I'll ever see unless I somehow wind up living much longer than I want to..

Luna, baby.

It's looking really good here in Livermore.

Yay! We like the moon!
http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/

Three more years isn't THAT long!

Didn't see a thing here in the South of the UK, completely clouded over

Looked beautiful from the northeast USA. Clouds cleared right on queue.

Looked good in Portland, too. I was expecting it to be cloudy, but, surprise, surprise, it was clear! I only wish I'd been closer to Mt. Hood, so I could see the eclipse over the mountain. Ah, well. Next time.

Wow did I misread a date (about the next Totality in Seattle). OK, OK, I'll stick around until 2010

I didn't see anything because it was at 3:30am so I was fast asleep!

Actually, it appears the next one you can see is less than 3 years away. December 21, 2010