
I can’t feel my toes. Its 16 degrees out and I have been outside for over 3 hours.
“First Light” is an astronomy term used to refer to the first use of a telescope for astronomical viewing. I got my telescope at the beginning of December but have not had a chance to use it till last night. I have never been into lunar eclipses that much. I have seen them before and although I always thought they were cool, they just never excited me that much. I was planning on observing the eclipse, but was leaning toward not taking the scope out. It was cold and to see anything well the scope has to cool down to the outside temperature. So if I took it out that meant I was committed to freezing my ass off for at least an hour even if I set it out ahead of time. My friend Craig, who is the person that got me into astronomy, had sent me a few emails about the eclipse and the spy satellite. So I decided to call him instead of sending an email. He told me how he was not a big fan of lunar eclipses also, until a few years ago he took his scope out to look at one. He said the best part was watching the line of the shadow move slowly across the moon. So I decided I had better put the scope out on the back porch to let it cool down enough so it didn’t fog over when I tried to use it.
So around 8:30, I start moving the scope from the back porch to the front porch. Being the geek I am, people call me with questions, so that’s when the phone calls start. Everything from questions about when the eclipse started (some news reports misquoted the times), to questions about what settings to use to take pictures of the moon. The 2nd one was one I didn’t know much about, but over the next hours I figured it out. If you look at the pictures I took you can see some of the differences, the really bad pictures I didn’t include.
I have mentioned in past blogs how during hunting season I love how the color of the world slowly changes from black & white to color in the early morning hours. Its not quite as drastic of a change as when Dorothy opens the door after she lands in OZ, but beautiful none the less. Quite a fitting reference I think, since this week I watched the Wizard of Oz while listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Its awesome to watch the moon go from white to gray, then to red. Its especially cool when its white & red and you can see the thin line of gray in between the two colors. The detail through the scope was so beautiful. The pictures are a very poor representation of the actual view through the scope but they are still very cool. In the one picture of Saturn you can see a blurry image because my hands were shaking so bad from the cold. Looking through the scope at Saturn you can actually see the gap between the rings and 3 or 4 of its moons. The most beautiful moment was right before the full eclipse. As the moon went from a bright light to a dull red all the background stars that were previously hidden by the moons bright glare, begin to shine. It was beautiful and, unfortunately, beyond the range of my digital camera to capture.
So now that I'm back on track with my long last past time be sure to look me up when the weather gets nicer. Until then you can check out my February 20, 2008 lunar eclipse photos. Just remember that looking through the scope is 100X better than the pictures I took!
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