28th August: Lunar Eclipse

A lunar eclipse was forecast for the early hours of this morning, only partial but at 93% not that bad.  I woke at 3am as I often do nowadays and looked out to find thin clouds partially obscuring the moon.  However when I looked out again at around 04:15 the sky was clear and the earth’s shadow was beginning to cross the moon.

I tend to find partial eclipses of the sun disappointing, looking similar to a bit of cloud getting in the way.  I’m sure a total eclipse is spectacular but I’ve never seen one of those.  However this lunar eclipse looked interesting and I sat out on the jetty in a deck chair and took occasional photos using my iphone, partially steadied by resting my hands on the horizontal bits of the jetty designed to stop shrouds catching on the uprights.

The last photo (and featured image) was created by using photoshop to adjust the exposure, enlarge, and sharpen slightly.

It was interesting to watch how quickly the shadow moved over the moon.  If you were on the moon you would presumably be seeing a spectacular near sunset/sunrise during the eclipse. Rayleigh scattering of the blue components leaves red light to colour the moon when seen from earth.