Three Days of Moon

It could have been four days of Moon, but I slept early and I missed Friday’s photo opportunity. I made it up this Saturday morning, though. Now, you will expect the main topic of this post be the lunar eclipse. Or, in popular terms: the super blue blood Moon. Actually, I prefer calling it a Perigee Second Full Moon in January Total Lunar Eclipse.

Yeah. A heavy mouthful. But it goes something like this:

I’d invited my friends to go watch the eclipse with me at a nearby relative’s balcony, but only two were able to come. We had homework and a quiz coming up the next day, but I decided to risk it and go watch the eclipse. But it was cool, it turned out our teacher had us open our books during the quiz. On with the story. Only two were able to make it, but one of them, a fifth grader (we’ll call him Prince) came to my house waaay early. Like, about three o’clock early. But we were eager, and checking the clouds and their movement. But it was same as always, east to west. I kept checking my bedroom window, which faced eastward. Large gloomy clouds hung in the skies, but I knew they were going to pass once the Sun went down. By civil twilight Prince and I rushed off to another classmate (his name is Ismael) who said he was coming separately to the watching site. When we arrived at his place, we found out he was already there at the house. So we rushed home, preapred the telescope, and went. It was a few steps away to the gate that led to the house. Upon exiting our place Prince had spotted the lunar glow from behind the clouds, and from what I remember, we were screaming like frantics at it. When the cars finally stopped for a while, we headed towards the gate where we were greeted by Danes, Prince’s classmate. He helped my brother around their street because of all the dogs while Prince and I carried the telescope. We soon arrived at a gate and my mom called for anyone to open the door. We found it was open and went in. We then went up to their balcony, which, surprisingly enough, was visible from my place. Then I set up the telescope, align it’s finder, and turn on a live Time and Date animation on Ismael’s iPad. Some of my mom’s officemates were there on a decision to watch the eclipse with us.

First contact was only spotted by me because of cloud cover and it’s general faintness. Sometime through the penumbral stage I recieved a text from my friend David, who was waiting at our rendezvous point. He ended up a bit late, and explained he waited about an hour and a half for me. I took him to the site, and for a while, we were standing there, waiting for the umbral stage.

Later,I was downstairs drinking some iced tea with Ismael. I went up and immediately saw a bite taken out of the lunar disk. One of my mom’s officemates noted that and wanted to photograph it, so I was handed his phone, adjusted the camera settings to show the shadowed Moon and snapped a photo. I also tried photography through the scope by holding my phone up to it since using my adapter would weigh down the scope and point it upwards. It was a fail, but was still fun anyway. I came back up after some more iced tea to see a red hue to the Moon’s shadowed portion. By now some college students with a relative of came up and we talked about astronomy for a bit. We watched on the iPad for totality to happen.

Lemme just say now that during totality, people were tryimg their absolute best at afocal photography, to the point of asking for someone to help them with a flashlight. I didn’t have time to adjust the settings for a better Moon, so this image serves these purposes: a memoir and to show where Earth’s shadow hit the Moon. It also exaggerates the darkness of our home planet’s shadow.

Now, onto the other stuff. It was my first eclipse, but since I had school the next day I slept around eleven. During the eclipse I saw that most of my classmates are still awake, watching the eclipse. Two even had a telescope viewing at their condominiums. But it was an absolutely spectacular eclipse. My gaze was lifted to the heavens as the western half of the moon lit up once again with the signature white glow. A few minutes before this I told one of my classmates to see totality before the finish. I was watching at home, by the way. Everyone left to prepare for bed. But I’ve seen totality begin and end. Very lit, if I do say so myself. More Moon! After the eclipse, I was at it again, trying to photograph the Moon. Here’s what came up: