The eclipse is just beginning.

I’d heard about this event and thought to try to get some pictures. Unfortunately it had been a busy day: I’d been updating my blog, cooked lunch, cooked dinner and baked some bread. My eyes were hurting and I was feeling very tired. My natural laziness kicked in and I decided to skip it. Then it occurred to me that this event only happens every 20 years or so. Since the likelihood is that I won’t be around in 20 years I won’t have anther chance to get these pictures. A sobering thought: enough to make me get out an old Canon 300mm (450mm equivalent) FD lens that I’d never actually used; dig out the Canon FD-Sony Nex adapter; grab my tripod and give it a go.

USA Today describes the event as follows:

What’s actually happening is a confluence of three things. The moon will be full and in its closest point in its orbit around the Earth, making it a so-called supermoon, according to Dr. David Wolf, a former NASA astronaut and “extraordinary scientist in residence” for The Children’s Museum. Supermoons appear 14% larger and 33% brighter than other full moons.

In addition to this, a lunar eclipse will occur. In other words, the Earth will line up directly with the sun and moon, directly between the two, Wolf said. So the “moon will completely fall in the shadow of the Earth,” he said.

Because a lot of light scatters off the Earth’s atmosphere, the moon will not look completely dark but have a coppery red color — hence the blood moon moniker.

Going…

…Going…And then just as we were about to get to “Gone!”, where the red-tinged “blood moon” would be visible, the clouds rolled in and obscured everything. I hung around for a while to see if the clouds would break. And there were occasional very brief gaps in the clouds – enough for me to see the blood moon (very spectacular), but not long enough for me to get a picture. The exposure times were too long and the clouds moved back before the exposure could finish.

I was satisfied. I’d overcome my laziness, seen the ‘blood moon’ and got a few pictures of the eclipse. A decent night’s work.

This was the aircraft from which the US Military Academy West Point Black Knights parachute team jumped. According to Wikipedia:

The Eurocopter UH-72 Lakota is a twin-engine helicopter with a single, four-bladed main rotor. The UH-72 is a militarized version of the Eurocopter EC145 and was built by American Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters, Inc.), a division of Airbus Group, Inc. Initially marketed as the UH-145, the helicopter was selected as the winner of the United States Army’s Light Utility Helicopter (LUH) program on 30 June 2006. In October 2006, American Eurocopter was awarded a production contract for 345 aircraft to replace aging UH-1H/V and OH-58A/C helicopters in the U.S. Army and Army National Guard fleets.