"A Marvelous Night for a Moondance..."

Total Lunar Eclipse - April 14-15, 2014

Total lunar eclipse late tonight into early Tuesday morning. Visible from most of North and South America, Hawaii, and parts of Alaska.

10:58pm - Partial eclipse begins
12:06am - Total eclipse starts
12:46am - GREATEST ECLIPSE
1:25am - Total eclipse ends
2:33 am - Partial eclipse ends

All times above are PDT.

Info courtesy of
Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar:
www.pa.msu.edu/abrams/SkyCalendar/



All of these pics were taken with our trusty point-and-shoot Sony Cyber-shot, hand-held to the eyepiece of our 25x field scope.

Jet contrail just below the moon as the eclipse begins

During the early phases of the eclipse, 3 large birds (cormorants?) flew across the face of the moon while I was observing through the scope naked-eye. Pretty cool... what are the chances?

Because of the high dark/bright contrast in the early phases of the eclipse, our images picked up some "green cheese" color aberration.

As the eclipse progressed, the colors in the pics were more true to naked-eye viewing.

This "Blood Moon" eclipse was the first in a series of four total lunar eclipses that will occur between April 2014 and May 2015. The next eclipse in this "tetrad" will be on October 8, 2014.


NASA's eclipse web site:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2014.html


"Well it's a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes..."
Moondance, lyrics by Van Morrison