Lunar eclipse tonight

[hotdogPi]

Eastern Daylight Time used throughout this post. Lunar eclipses happen simultaneously everywhere, so if you are in a different time zone, convert the times.

Current day and time as of typing this: 9:04 PM, September 27, 2015

Penumbral eclipse: 8:12 PM - 1:22 AM
Partial eclipse: 9:07 PM - 12:27 AM
Total eclipse: 10:11 PM - 11:23 PM
Maximum: 10:47 PM

(Times from here)

This moon is also the harvest moon, a blood moon, and a supermoon.

[rickmastfan67]

Live video feed if you have clouds blocking your view:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/watchtheskies/live-feed-of-sundays-supermoon-eclipse.html
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

[ET21]

Slowly beginning

[rickmastfan67]

Looks like I will not be able to see it live from my place.  Too many dang clouds in the sky.

Was able to catch a glimpse of the Super Moon back at about 7:30PM on my way home before the clouds showed up to completely block the sky.

[Jim]

Crystal clear skies in eastern NY.  Impressive show!

[empirestate]

Crystal clear skies in eastern NY.  Impressive show!

But not southeastern NY. However, the early stages were mostly unobstructed by thin, high clouds. The bulk of the event was clouded over with very occasional breaks, but we did enjoy a minute or two of clearing right at the maximum point. Through binoculars, I enjoyed seeing a background of stars right up to the moon's disc, making it look more like Mars than our own satellite.

[SignGeek101]

Perfect view from Winnipeg. Didn't watch the whole thing, but a lot of pictures were taken! Might post some later.

[DaBigE]

Weathercasters on the local stations kept saying we'd have poor to fair viewing due to clouds, but at least by me, all the clouds disappeared just in time:

(photo I took just outside my home)

[empirestate]

Even at totality, it seems everyone still saw a thin highlight on one edge or another of the moon's disc; did anybody have a moment where they saw the moon as thoroughly and uniformly red? Or is the highlight just an unavoidable feature of any lunar eclipse (the sun still has to shine from somewhere)?

[bandit957]

Every place in the world saw it except us, because it was cloudy.

[Pete from Boston]

My favorite part was watching the throngs out in the streets and parks all staring up, periodically cheering, clapping, and in one instance chanting "MOON! MOON!  MOON!"  Nice to see people enjoying this little tear in the fabric of normalcy.


iPhone

[vdeane]

I don't recall the moon looking particularly red last night.  Really dark gray yes, but red no.

[freebrickproductions]

Too cloudy here in Huntsville, AL.

[empirestate]

Too cloudy here in Huntsville, AL.

No it wasn't; didn't you see the comment above? Kentucky is the only place in the world that was too cloudy.


iPhone

[Rothman]

I don't recall the moon looking particularly red last night.  Really dark gray yes, but red no.

You must not have been looking at the same moon I was.

[hotdogPi]

I don't recall the moon looking particularly red last night.  Really dark gray yes, but red no.

You must not have been looking at the same moon I was.

Or maybe he saw it at a different time. If it was before 10:11 PM (EDT, also UTC-4:00), it looked like a partial moon, with no red appearing.

[Rothman]

I don't recall the moon looking particularly red last night.  Really dark gray yes, but red no.

You must not have been looking at the same moon I was.

Or maybe he saw it at a different time. If it was before 10:11 PM (EDT, also UTC-4:00), it looked like a partial moon, with no red appearing.

Wait...vdeane's a dude?

[xcellntbuy]

Heavy clouds here in middle Georgia.  We are having our seventh day of rain in a row.

[vdeane]

I don't recall the moon looking particularly red last night.  Really dark gray yes, but red no.

You must not have been looking at the same moon I was.

Or maybe he she saw it at a different time. If it was before 10:11 PM (EDT, also UTC-4:00), it looked like a partial moon, with no red appearing.

I was periodically checking it from the small window on my front door.  I may not have caught it at the best time.  And I'm also comparing it to a couple of lunar eclipses I saw in the past that were really impressive with the red; judging by the photos I've seen of this one, the red was less impressive than usual (perhaps because of the super moon?).

[1995hoo]

I'll upload eclipse pictures next week after we get home. We were at the Valley of the Gods Bed and Breakfast near the Moki Dugway. The eclipse was perfect for us. I stuck the 300 mm lens on the camera to take close-ups of the Moon, then switched to a wide-angle lens to get the stars and the Milky Way. By far the most spectacular sky I've seen since sometime in the 1980s, and the eclipse darkening the moon made it that much better! The final picture I took was a 25-minute exposure that made the stars look like they were rotating around the sky.

We're at the Grand Canyon now. Not sure I'll stay out late at the rim to take more night-sky pictures. The goal tonight is to capture the sunset. It's something like a 15-minute walk down to the rim, so I won't be going back and forth a lot.

[wxfree]

A really beautiful photo from this area is going around Facebook.  Someone took a photo about every 10 minutes showing the Dallas skyline and the progress of the moon's movement and of the eclipse and composited them into a single image.

Facebook post

Direct link to image

[vdeane]

I don't recall the moon looking particularly red last night.  Really dark gray yes, but red no.

You must not have been looking at the same moon I was.

Or maybe he she saw it at a different time. If it was before 10:11 PM (EDT, also UTC-4:00), it looked like a partial moon, with no red appearing.

I was periodically checking it from the small window on my front door.  I may not have caught it at the best time.  And I'm also comparing it to a couple of lunar eclipses I saw in the past that were really impressive with the red; judging by the photos I've seen of this one, the red was less impressive than usual (perhaps because of the super moon?).

Come to think of it, I wonder if light pollution is a factor.  Comparing a view from a freeway traversing exurban/rural areas to one from a decently-lit apartment parking lot might not be fair...

[Pete from Boston]

I first saw it from the Mass Pike.  There was just a black smudge for most of the progress of the shadow.  Not until I saw it well more than 50% total from the Common here close to an hour later was there a red glow.

[empirestate]

I don't recall the moon looking particularly red last night.  Really dark gray yes, but red no.

You must not have been looking at the same moon I was.

Or maybe he she saw it at a different time. If it was before 10:11 PM (EDT, also UTC-4:00), it looked like a partial moon, with no red appearing.

I was periodically checking it from the small window on my front door.  I may not have caught it at the best time.  And I'm also comparing it to a couple of lunar eclipses I saw in the past that were really impressive with the red; judging by the photos I've seen of this one, the red was less impressive than usual (perhaps because of the super moon?).

Come to think of it, I wonder if light pollution is a factor.  Comparing a view from a freeway traversing exurban/rural areas to one from a decently-lit apartment parking lot might not be fair...

The redness didn't show for me until the partial phase was fully elapsed and the moon was in total shadow. Even then, a thin veil of clouds across the moon's face would dull the redness into a gray-black, so you might have been looking through conditions like that.

[kkt]

Wonderful, wonderful view here!  Went to Snoqualmie Point Park with a star party of about 500 other folks -- some amateur (or pro) astronomers with telescopes and some interested general public with binoculars or just eyeballs.  Beautifully clear skies of the sort we in the Pacific Northwest have learned better than to expect!  Moon was sort of a brownish orange during totality.  Nice long total period, and it was a bonus for us getting it in the early evening so we weren't half asleep or dead on our feet Monday.  All in all, an ideal astronomical event.