Full Moon - No Moon

Monday night was a beautiful night with a full moon and clear sky. Around 10 pm I took the golf car for a slow cruise in the cool night air. The wind was calm and the weeds and other plants were giving off some very pungent odors. We drove very slowly for about 5 miles along the county roads needing only the light of the full moon to show the way. I did have flashing caution lights on the roof but I couldn't see them so they were no distraction.

I only saw two cars coming from Wiggins Rd and turning north on CR206 otherwise is was very peaceful and quiet. Yes, a few dogs barked when they noticed a strange vehicle pass their way.

Later in the night around 4:30 am I was up to see the total lunar eclipse. It was nearing totality by the time I dressed and gathered my cameras. Of course when I turned on my still camera the batteries were dead so I had to go back inside for fresh power.

Here is a time lapse view taken with the handheld video camera just before totality. The moon was not moving but I couldn't hold the camera still enough.

I tried to use the new blogger video tool but after it crashed a half dozen times I returned to the one above.

After getting new batteries loaded into my still camera and finding the setting for night shots I took this picture while the moon was in total Eclipse. Even though I used a tripod the view is blurred partly I think because of the rotation of the Earth. In some of my shots that included stars I noticed that the stars were stripes instead of dots and the stripes were all oriented in the same direction!

For many observers, the most striking aspect of the eclipse was the Moon's reddish hue during totality. During an eclipse, when the Moon is in Earth's shadow, there is a little bit of sunlight that passes through our atmosphere. White light from the sun is composed of all the colors of the rainbow, but our atmosphere treats different colors differently. Blue-colored light is scattered in all directions by airborne molecules. This is the same phenomenon that causes our sky to be blue. Red-colored light, on the other hand, is scattered very little. However, it is refracted (bent) inward toward the Moon. Red light that hits the Moon is reflected back toward Earth, so that we see the Moon glowing red during totality. If the Earth did not have an atmosphere, the Moon would be nearly black during a total lunar eclipse. [NASA website]