Blog de Puree

The total lunar eclipse that took place on Wednesday night, February 20, 2008 was nothing short of spectacular.

About 40 degrees high in the eastern sky, the bright full, white moon slowly darkened from Earth’s shadow over the course of a couple of hours. While it was hard to see the shadow actually creep across the Moon’s surface with the naked eye—like in the movies—I could slightly make out some movement when looking through the telescope. As the Moon darkened, the most interesting part for me was the different colorations that could be seen. The moon never actually blacked out, but the eclipse just cycled through gradations of colored shadow the moon could be viewed clearly the entire time.

To top the evening off, my neighbor and their daughter brought out their new telescope as well. With two scopes set up in our back yard, we watched the eclipse. At scattered moments we also stole views of Saturn, which was to the left and down from the moon. Viewing was so good that we could see Saturn’s rings clearly. It was February, however, and we stuck it out for roughly an hour before the cold temperatures drove us inside.

Here are a few pictures, courtesy of Space.com, which show exactly what we were looking at.

This is how the eclipsed looked early in the evening as the Earth’s shadow started creeping across the moon.

This photo shows some of the red and yellow tinges that we were able to make out through our telescopes.

This is the best view of the coloration of moon that we were able to see.