I became aware of last nights spectacular lunar eclipse from reading a fellow cruiser's blog yesterday afternoon. I guess it is symptomatic of our wireless digital age that I should learn it this way when his boat is but 50 or so yards from ours. Anyhow the weather was forecast to be clear and a full moon was up in the East as we were eating our dinner. So I went onto the internet and looked up the timing for the big show and set my alarm accordingly.
I awoke around 1:00 am, put on the propane cockpit heater and settled in with my novel ready to watch the big show. What a great seat I had! Around 2:00 a good size chunk had been eaten out of the full moon. By 3:15 or so there was only a sliver of bright moon left on a red sphere of the moon in eclipse. Apparently the red is caused by ash in the atmosphere from a recent volcanic eruption. As we approached total eclipse, the stars came out. The great picture of a red moon was taken from the New York Times front page this morning. My less than spectacular shot was taken at 3:00 am.
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