Falling asleep in our cereals

 

The Total Lunar Eclipse at Totality. Canon DSLR 600d, EOS telephoto lens at f=300mm mounted on a Star Adventurer mount. Taken from our backyard in the early hours of 28th September 2015. Note the stars which, would normally be invisible in the moon's glare, are clearly visible in this image.

Last night Toot and I came home from Southend after a wonderful weekend with our children and grandchildren. We were a bit tired but wanted to see the lunar eclipse and if possible photograph it. It had been a lovely sunny day with beautiful blue skies so we thought we would stay up late, 3.00 am., to watch the moon grow dark and glow blood red.  But oh no!  The clouds came rolling in from the North Sea and one by one stars and then the moon disappeared from view.

Not daunted I set up my astro kit in our backyard and sat myself down in the dark. Every now and then the clouds would break and I would catch glimpses of familiar constellations and the 'super moon'.  In my opinion the moon always looks super and I must say Toot and I always like to go out and look at the full moon, wink at it for Neil Armstrong and call it Cosmo's moon like in the film 'Moonstruck'.

Last night the moon was at its nearest to the earth, so it appeared larger in the sky. The moon and earth form a binary system and as a consequence both the moon and the earth revolve around the common gravitational centre of their combined masses. As the earth has a mass much greater than the moon, this common point is within the earth's volume but it is not at the earth's centre.  From our position on the surface of earth, the moon appears to circle the earth but in actuality it follows the approximate path of an ellipse. It is therefore some times nearer to us (perigee) and sometimes further away (apogee).

The lunar eclipse passes through different phases. The penumbral phase occurs on either side of totality and shows as a gradual darkening, and after totality lightening, of the moons disk. During the period of totality the moon can be seen with reduced luminosity and often shows a range of colours.  These colors are created by the sunlight that passes through and is diffracted by the earth's atmosphere. The colours are predominately in the red range because red light is diffracted and absorbed less by the earth's atmosphere than light in the blue frequencies.

The early penumbral stage before totality. The image is a composite of six images which in turn were derived from six video clips taken with my QHY 5v colour planetary camera fixed to my Star Adventurer mount. The clips were taken during a longish break in the clouds. Sadly the clouds were not so kind during totality so I was unable to use this much better technique. But that's the wonder of astro-imaging and the British weather.

Anyway, Toot and I had a great night watching the eclipse and went to bed at 5.00am.after 'hot chocolates' all around.  So no wonder we were falling asleep in our cornflakes!