February's Lunar Eclipse: Report

The next lunar eclipse visible from North America won't occur until December 2010, so hopefully you got a chance to see this last one in February.

Sadly, here in Orange County, California, it was cloudy for most of the event. However, at one point just before the Moon completely entered the centermost, reddish portion of the Earth's shadow, the clouds broke at my location and I was able to watch the eclipse for about five minutes. So I was reasonably happy with that.

Apparently the northern part of the county, as well as Los Angeles County, had somewhat better conditions. Here are some images taken by members of the Orange County Astronomers in those locations:

Lunar eclipse in Fullerton, taken by Cor Simons.

Lunar eclipse and the Queen Mary, in Long Beach (L.A. County), taken by Wally Pacholka.

Lunar eclipse mosaic, very nice! Taken from Cerritos (L.A. County), by Dave Kodama.

Astronomy Picture of the Day can usually be counted on to post some of the very best images from around the world of each astronomical event. I liked this one, which demonstrates the snowflake principle in effect: no two eclipses are exactly alike! And this photo, although a composite, in my opinion does justice in capturing the effect of a darkened moon and the resulting stars that become visible around it. (To appreciate this, you have to be an observant enough skywatcher who's familiar with the view we normally have of a (non-eclipsed) full Moon: it's so bright that it completely drowns out the majority of stars around it).