I'm tired.
I've been desperately trying to nap in the face of a full blown nattering session of my daughter. I've finally given up fighting against her stream of consciousness. It was time I wrote up this post anyway.
The reason that I am tired, of course, is that I was up until the wee hours observing and photographing this morning's eclipse. One of the main significances of the eclipse falling on the equinox is that the moon traveled pretty much through the centre of the Earth's shadow, resulting in a long time at totality, 72 minutes. It was incredible.
I woke Travis up for the start of the eclipse, and after he had his fill of watching the shadow biting off parts of the moon, he went back to bed, telling me to wake him up during totality.
I tried. He woke up, told me he was staying in bed, and to show him photos in the morning. Which, of course, he couldn't remember telling me when he awoke this morning and thus was thoroughly ticked off at me for not waking him. Hilary, the sanest of us all, woke up and knew right away that she'd prefer to experience it through photographs, and was quite happy to go back to sleep having made that decision.
So, on to some of the photos.
This is the Moon at a little less than half eclipse, and one of my favourite of the night. It took me a while to get the exposure right, as I often forget that the Moon is a rock in bright sunlight, and usually over expose it.
The next two are two different takes of the Moon a little farther along, one exposing the shadowed portion, the other the sunlit portion.
This photo is one of my favourites of the hundred or so I took, and it is purely an accident. This is the moon at almost totality. Lens flare adds a nice touch to the photo I think, the Moon's reflection in my lens.
As the eclipse deepened, the night sky darkened, bringing more and more stars into view, and making their magnitude appear to grow. This, while not spectacular, is one of my favourite pieces of the night sky, the constellation Pleiades, the seven sisters.
Here is the Moon at totality, shortly after the last vestige of it disappeared into the shadow.
Here the Moon hangs above Orion, his belt just visible above the hills behind our house. Depending on your monitor it may be hard to see the hills in the glow of the street lights.
And finally here is the wider view, our Moon hanging in the bejewelled night sky. This is truly a wonder filled world we live in.
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