Loose Strife

I was surprised how impressive the lunar eclipse was on Wednesday night. We had a cloudless sky full of stars in Ashfield. A friend of ours teaches science to high schoolers in Manhattan and she asked me to take some pictures. It was a cold 5 degrees out and the weather caused lots of troubles with the camera, but I managed to get a few good shots with a telephoto lens. Here are two. The first is a partial eclipse of the earth over the moon. The second is a full eclipse. The moon appears orange even to the naked eye because refracted light bends around the earth, passes through lots of atmosphere turning red like a sunset, and lights up the dark moon.

I’m not much of a stargazer, but I will say that this pales in comparison to a total solar eclipse, which I was fortunate enough to see several years ago in Germany. There’s one in the United States in 2017 and it sounds crazy, but I urge everyone to make a point to go see it. I’ll be in Wyoming. No clouds.