Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Photos of the Lunar Eclipse, 8/28/07

I SAW IT!!!I woke up this morning at 5:00, since that's when I had my alarm set. After getting up at 3:00 for work for the past few weeks this did not present much of a problem. Unfortunately the Moon, which was already moving into the central part of the Earth's shadow, was settling behind my neighbor's house across the street. I wonder if they noticed me taking pictures of their house at 5:15 in the morning.
I relocated to my usual photo-taking spot, with my tiny plastic tabletop tripod from Kmart perched on the roof of my car. Fortunately the Moon was lined up well with the street in front of my house.
Unfortunately, it was obviously going to move behind the big evergreen tree half a block away before it actually reached totality.
So I moved to an alternate site - the trunk of my mom's car.
But the Moon continued to move behind the tree anyway!
In the end, totality occurred when the Moon was not well-placed for me to photograph it - I had to prop my camera against the trunk of an Oak tree to get this photo, and the lack of a stable base caused it to be blurred. The Moon was also moving into the thickest part of the atmosphere anyway as the sky was brightening in the final minutes before sunrise, so it was quickly becoming difficult to see the Moon at all.

If you got to see the eclipse, I hope you had even better seeing conditions than I did!

5 comments:

dee said...

It was a clear morning here and I was awake, but I had the same problem -- damn earth kept turning. I did have an extra special experience at totality, though, which you can read about at my blog.

anne said...

Thanks for the photos as they are the only view of the lunar eclipse for me. I briefly toyed with the idea of setting my alarm to get up to watch it but I was just too tired.

Todd HellsKitchen said...

Very cool!

whimsical brainpan said...

Thanks for sharing the pics! I didn't get to see it. And like the weatherman forecasted, it was too foggy.

Anonymous said...

aweome pics harold! well done you. :)