Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Blood Moon

I set my alarm and woke up at 2 am so I could watch the lunar eclipse last night. I wanted to try to get some photos of the "blood moon". It was COLD outside, like in the low 30s, so I pretty much froze while standing on the back porch.

I started shooting when the moon was rising and got this shot:
After that I went to bed and waited for my alarm.   Kate actually woke up during the night a couple of times, so I didn't even sleep all that well during the time I was supposed to be sleeping.

I knew the eclipse would begin sometimes around midnight but it wouldn't be in full eclipse until just after 2, so I decided that would be my target time. I didn't really see the need to watch the whole two hours before hand because I needed to be able to function today.
You could also see Mars really well last night, and the blue giant star Spica was hanging out near the moon and very bright as well.
In between  taking photos, I ran in to my computer to upload what I was shooting and make sure my focus was in check. It was really hard to manually focus on the moon because of the angle in the sky, which meant my tripod was aimed really high so I had to crouch below it to see, which was a bit challenging. Never mind that I had to balance my tripod up on two chairs and a garden statue because the power lines that run behind my house were in my way. I had to be able to shoot through the wires, instead of having them cut across my moon. It was awkward.


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