Lunar Eclipse San Diego 12/2011

Who wakes up at 5 am to watch a lunar eclipse?  We do, we do!  Granted, the first words out of Janka’s lips, as we opened our eyes in dark­ness, were: “Maybe we can go at 5.30?”  Rather than grab a few winks, we got up and fixed some cof­fee and hot coco instead. We grabbed the cam­eras, binoc­u­lars, and our trusted tri­pod.  James asked Wyatt if he would like to come but our feline friend purr-furs sleep over a moon eclipse. Dri­ving through the quiet and deserted streets, we con­tem­plated head­ing towards our favorite bridge, but con­cluded that the Nature Cen­ter park­ing lot in Chula Vista would prob­a­bly offer the best view of the moon.

Since this was the last lunar eclipse observ­able here until April 2014, we were glad we made it and got a chance to view this fas­ci­nat­ing moon eclipse. The vis­i­bil­ity was per­fect as we watched the Earth slowly cast a shadow on its only nat­ural satel­lite. Janka talked about her fas­ci­na­tion with the Uni­verse and shared her find­ings about this per­fect align­ment of the Sun, Earth and Moon that occurs roughly twice a year, but is, nat­u­rally, only vis­i­ble on cer­tain parts of our planet. You can find some inter­est­ing facts on Lunar Eclipse in this video.

We were alone when we arrived, except for a lone police offi­cer parked in the cor­ner of the lot.  I had the tri­pod and our canon Pow­er­shot SD940IS.  Not sure why I went with the point and shoot for the begin­ning see­ing as how I had our Nikon D40 as well. Even­tu­ally, a cou­ple more spec­ta­tors arrived and started tak­ing pic­tures as well. By this time, the moon was com­pletely cov­ered by the shadow of our planet, and was of an unusual, orangey-red color.

As the day­light began to slowly move in, we packed our gear and headed home… back to bed!

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Tags: lunar eclipse