Best Photo of Lunar Eclipse

Were you outside at around 3AM (eastern US time) this morning? I was, and the sky here in The Villages, FL was sparkling clear. With the Moonlight toned down thanks to the shadow of the Earth, the stars were astonishingly vivid.

In my backyard with our darkened house on one side and the golf course pond on the other, there was little ambient light to interfere with this rare event. According to Wikipedia, it was "the first total lunar eclipse to occur on the day of the Northern Winter Solstice (Southern Summer Solstice) since 1638, and only the second in the Common Era."

I watched in awe, at about 2:45AM, as the Earth's shadow covered first 80% of the Moon's surface, and then, at around 3:15 to 3:20AM, all of it. WOW!

The photo above [click on image for larger view] is the best I've seen of the view available to me. It was posted at Spaceweather.com by Howard L Cohen who took it at Gainesville, FL, some 50 miles north of my location. THANKS Howard! (The linked site has many other photos, but none as clear as the view we were blessed with in Central Florida, at least IMHO.)

Ira Glickstein