A brighter eclipse

kw: world events, eclipses

Here is how the moon looked at 2:50 AM EST. The image is from slooh.com, or perhaps this Slooh link. I got up at 2:00, just halfway between first contact and second contact, and watched until 2:45, then dashed down to the computer to download the first live feed I could find. Until I get a longer telephoto lens for my camera, it doesn't make much sense to photograph the moon myself.

I've seen all kinds of lunar eclipses. For most of them, the moon after second contact (just after it enters the umbra) looks a lot like this, but redder. This time it is brighter and more yellow-orange. The global skies must be quite clear and free of dust. One time about thirty years ago, a few weeks after a major volcanic eruption, there was a lunar eclipse in which the moon simply vanished into the umbra and could not be seen at all until third contact.