January 30th, 2018, 08:00 p.m. local time
Very thick cloud cover throughout the sky. No sign of the rising Moon.
January 31st, 2018, 12:20 a.m. local time
I stepped outside for a moment. Clouds everywhere, but the circular form of the Moon shown through them from above. It was blurry, but obviously visible.
January 31st, 2018, 05:30 a.m. local time
Incredibly, not a cloud in my Western sky!
The night before, I had prepared my 127mm Mak-Cass and digital camera with tripod, hoping to see and capture this morning’s Lunar Eclipse event. Though bitterly cold, I persevered, and it was well worth the effort.
I did not get to see the entire eclipse, as expected, but I saw a great deal of it. The full eclipse happened about 15 minutes after Sunrise when the Moon had already set past the West horizon.
At the top is the nearly Full Moon at about 5:30am. About ten minutes later, darkness was obviously beginning to enshroud the upper-left of the Moon:
And 15 minutes after that:
Approaching 6:00am, the Moon was about to descend below a house. This was the last picture I took while it was still visible:
At this point I scuttled, I mean abandoned…err just left my telescope where it was, in favor of the more mobile digital camera on tripod. This allowed me to quickly get at angles between trees and houses to see the Moon as it began its final descent.
Around 6:30am, the Moon looked almost like its normal crescent, but of course we know this shape was caused today by the Earth’s shadow:
January 31st, 2018, 06:45 a.m. local time
A half hour before Sunrise, I caught my last view of the Moon this morning, now just a fading red arc, like a gliding feather about to touch the ground.
Soon after I took this last picture, clouds started to blanket the Western sky once again.
