Luna Eclipse

It’s cloudy many nights of the year here so Wednesday Oct 8 I got up at 3:00 AM to see the totality of the Lunar Eclipse. The moon does not get as red as the news would make it. Also there was a thin bit of white on one side of the moon instead of being completely red. Unlike a solar eclipse the Lunar eclipse takes a long time to unfold.

While waiting for the moon to slip fully into the shadow I saw that the Orion constellation was high over head. I turned my binoculars on the three stars of Orion’s sword. I had forgotten that the three stars were doubles. I need magnification to split (show them as two stars) them.

The sky was clear and the stars were bright, even with four street lights visible from the back yard. The stars barely twinkled. I should have gotten a copy of Sky and Telescope. There were two stars that most likely were planets but I don’t keep track of which planets are where in the sky like I use to so I don’t know which ones they were.

I could hear the barking of sea lions in the night air. There was plenty of traffic even that early in the morning. The dew was heavy too.

After 45 minutes I headed back inside. It had been a long day and the coming day promised to be a hard long day also.

Still I got to see the eclipse and the temperature wasn’t as bad as the time I went down to Baja California to see the total eclipse of the sun.

Writ on, draw on.  Professor Voltage.