With this month's lunar eclipse favoring the east coast of the United States - the Moon well above the horizon at mid-totality before midnight on a Sunday evening - I was hoping for some clear skies so that I could put the 80mm Vixen through its paces. However, the weatherman had other ideas. I kept checking every 15 minutes or so once the eclipse had started shortly after 9 p.m. but conditions were overcast.
Finally a little before 11 p.m. I saw one or two postings on Facebook from folks who were saying they could see something. I stuck my head out the window and sure enough the clouds had broken up enough to reveal a coppery Moon hanging high in the eastern sky. While not practical to set up the Vixen I grabbed the camera, telephoto lens, and tripod and headed for the back yard.
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| Lunar Eclipse in Pisces with High Thin Clouds |
The view was fantastic - a fairly dark eclipse I would say, with a color range from darkish red-brown to the copper colored edge nearest the limb of Earth's shadow. I really felt at home with the DSLR this time in manual mode, firing off a range of photos and adjusting them based upon the near instant feedback displayed on the LCD. The clouds continued to try to take back possession of the evening but not before I was able to secure a few memorable shots.
The one thing that I have to say - I am so tired of all this "Super Moon!!" junk in the papers and social media. And the fact that we had a "super" Moon undergoing eclipse - well one would think that it was as rare as a Venus transit. It was a great eclipse to be sure, but the slight difference in the Moon's size as it was near perigee was more of an academic footnote than of any real visual consequence.
