Out Of The Shadow, Into The Light

Total Eclipse

Edge of Umbra

More Light

Out of the Shadow

(Click on images above to enlarge)

Early Tuesday morning, on August 28th, I woke up at 2:45 am to see the total Lunar eclipse that was visible for the first time in many years on the west coast. I had heard about them, and seen pictures of them, but never witnessed a full eclipse. I was at the StarLodge and when I went to bed, the landscape was bathed in moon glow due the full moon that was rising into the celestial canopy. Hardly any constelations could be seen because of the radiant glow of the moon. At 2:45 my alarm went off and I wearily stepped outside and looked up. I felt like I was in a dream. All the stars had returned, the milky way was bright, and the moon looked like it had been dipped in red paint. I quickly setup my Canon 10D on my FSQ 106 refractor and took some images. For the next 90 minutes I watched the moon pass through the main shadow of earth (The Umbra).

Even though the moon was in the earth's shadow, there was still enough remnant light that was passing next to the moon to cause it to glow a crimson red. This light had passed through the earth's atmosphere before it reached the moon. The blue part of the spectrum being diffracted more readily in earth's atmosphere, leaving the red light. This is similar to the effect we see at sunset, when the suns rays are more oblique and pass through more of the earth's atmosphere, filtering out the blue due to diffraction and leaving a red hue.

For me, the most inspiring part of the experience was watching the light return, as the moon slowly moved out from beneath the earths shadow and became once again bathed in light.