Lunar Eclipse 03/03/07

Did anyone see the lunar eclipse last night? It was absolutely smashing, here in Wareham; the worrisome rainclouds of late afternoon gave way to a beautifully clear winter sky.

I was once really keen on astronomy and it's one of those things I seem to have found a lot less time for in adult life, however the draw of an eclipse or shooting stars in late summer - or the treat of a properly dark sky somewhere remote, rather than one over-burdened with artificial light - still fills me with tremendous excitement and fascination. To me, it's one of those precious life experiences quite similar to the feeling you get staring into a campfire or being absorbed in making something simple with your hands. You get that sense of connectedness, a sense of flow - a sense that these are the kinds of things people have done forever, they are hard coded into what we are.

I took some shots of the moon with my standard Olympus on a tripod, so I couldn't get in as close as I would have liked, but they came out as well as I could expect.

Here we are approaching total eclipse with just the top of the moon still to fall into shadow:



And now we are in near totality - the moon has that brilliant orangey-red glow, apparently from the light still being refracted through the earth's atmosphere:



A very pleasant way to spend a Saturday evening. I am currently trying to quell the urge to buy a new camera or lenses for this kind of thing, so am making do with all the brilliant efforts on Flickr.