A red lunar eclipse
Last night it didn’t snow until after midnight. The amazing thing about that was it meant the skies were cloud free between 11pm and 12.30pm, the time the total lunar eclipse occurred over the northern hemisphere night sky. Now being into SF, you’d think I’d have been right on top of this, but truth be told, I had remembered hearing something about it, but then forgotten about it.
So it was very lucky I was chatting to someone online who happened to mention the lunar eclipse while it was happening last night. I immediately abandoned my computer and sprinted to the door, grabbing my bathrobe on the way (well… it was about 11.20pm and I was ready for bed!). I flung it open… the “-3C feels like -10C” air punched me hard, but I gazed up at the sky above and it was clear, black – and there was the moon, completely visible – or what was left of it to be visible!
The last time I was reminded to watch a total solar eclipse was in Sydney, Australia back in 2000. I do remember going outside and gazing up at the skies then, but it was covered in fast moving, shredded clouds. True, I could see the moon, partially turned a reddish-brown colour, but the night was so ugly and the glimpses to fleeting, it wasn’t worth persisting with (or at least, I didn’t think so!).
Last night was a treat though! I now know I missed the beginning around 9.18pm (Newfoundland time) when the moon began to enter the Earth’s shadow, but arrived just as only a tiny silver crescent existed on the ‘right’ side (as you look at it) of the moon. The rest of the moon gradually shaded from orange-brown to a deep red-brown on the ‘left’ side. Over the next 10 minutes, that crescent of shining white gradually shrunk until 11.30pm (or 11.31pm to be precise!), nothing existed except a moon that was now a deep dusty orange-brown colour, tending to an almost murky blood red over the mare’s.
Having read nothing on lunar eclispes, I thought they proceeded at the same speed as solar eclipses so expected it to be over a few minutes later, but no… It kept going so in the end I looked it up – 51 minutes! After about 10 minutes, the blood red edge of the moon seemed to also fade to a dark orange brown and then it stayed at about that colour until finally just before 12.30pm, a tiny speck of white emerged at the base of the moon and gradually blossumed into a white arc. The lunar eclipse was over and it was bed time for me!
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