Super Blue Blood Moon

I don't consider myself a full blown astronomy geek but I do like to occasionally get out and observe some celestial phenomena.  This Wednesday was a lunar eclipse. I won't be able to see the whole eclipse since moon would set about 15 mins after the eclipse began but seeing the moon set during an eclipse might be interesting.

The press dubbed this eclipse the Super Blue Blood Moon which is such a misleading description that it might it gives people unrealistic expectation of what they will see. First a moon is called a blue moon when it is the second full moon during a single month. It has nothing to do with the actual color of the moon. The super part is equally misleading. A super moon is when the full moon occurs during the perigee (lowest point of the moon's orbit). However when the moon is at perigee it is less then 1% closer and there is no perceivable difference to the naked eye. Or as Neil Degrasse Tyson put it

"If last month’s Full Moon were a 16.0 inch pizza, then this month’s ‘Super’ Moon would be 16.1 inches. I’m just saying."

The blood red part is a reference to the color of the moon when it is full eclipse. Unlike the sun when the moon is eclipsed it is still visible because there is still light reflected from the edge of the earth atmosphere that can some times give it a slightly red ting but a lot depends on the amount and type of particles in the earths atmosphere.

To see the eclipse I got up a hour early and headed to the Mercer County park rowing center which has a good clear view of the western sky. When I got there I took a couple of pictures of the moon before the eclipse began. It was just above the electrical lines and was reflecting off the water which made for an interesting picture.

It was cold so I sat in the car and got out a few times to take some pictures. Right before the eclipse started I got a close up picture of the moon in the power lines.

I took all these picture with my good Canon camera on a tripod. The camera has a 12 X zoom which is just enough zoom to see some detail on the moon. The eclipse started a 6:48am with the moon setting at 7:01am so I would not see much of the eclipse and it might get lost in the clouds. I got lucky because it was a clear day. To get a better view of the horizon I moved from the lake to golf course and got the final pictures as the moon set. There was strip of clouds going across the bottom of the moon and you can just see the shadow of the earth starting across the moon on the top left. So although the moon was neither super blue or blood red it was still worth getting up early for.