Total Lunar Eclipse

Well another total Lunar Eclipse has come and gone and guess what, I was able to view it, oh happy day! The images I took above are from the top to bottom; totality, almost totality, start of totality and start of the eclipse.

When I woke up Monday morning I noticed the Moon was smack dab in the middle of the neighbor's trees, I had to formulate a plan of attack if I was to view and take pictures of the eclipse. My options were, the school ground or the park just down and across the street from me. Then as I was pulling into work, it hit me, the mall where I work would be perfect, wide open view of the south west sky and my own personal security guard, score! The next hurdle I would have to overcome is how I was going to get my Big A_ _ scope, that's right my big Arm scope, because that's what I break every time I move it; to the mall, an employee friend of mine

volunteered the use of his truck, problem solved.

Now there was the small problem of the forecast, the weather channel was saying rain , but the Clear sky clock, which is very accurate for a 24 hour time period, said the weather would be clear for Saskatoon between 1 and 5 am, I told my wife this and she laughed, probably thinking poor crazy Bob. At 9:30pm, T-5.5 hours and counting, it was raining, I was thinking, stupid rain, stupid clouds, stupid hobby and stupid clear sky clock. and went to sleep. I woke up at 1:30am to head over to the mall and put the time in just in case hell froze over, and to my surprise I had clear skies! Yes Clear Sky Clock rules!

So I get to the mall set up the scope, get my own security guy and we wait. Well of course while we're waiting I proceed to tell the guard all about eclipses, how the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon and casts a shadow on to the lunar landscape and it's orange and brown because Earth's atmosphere scatters and absorbs the blues and allows the reds of the Sun's light through to the Lunar surface, we then got into Quantum Mechanics and Superstring Theory, well I did anyways but I could tell he was just soaking it all in. I don't know what happened to him, I went in to the office to get another eyepiece and when I came out he was gone, must have been called away to an emergency. Below is a pic of the scope and guard.

Check out Anna's site, she was going to be out this morning as well trying to get some pics of the eclipse, hope everything went well for her too. Actually my guard did come back, he finally started talking, he's a history buff, we got talking about the American civil war actually, something I am very interested in, great eclipse, great weather, and great conversation.