I did not have too much luck watching the eclipse tonight as the weather did not cooperate.
However, there was a short window when I did get to see the moon while it was eclipsed.
When I first looked outside it had just rained and the sky was mostly cloudy. I searched around and couldn’t find the moon. I need to know exactly where to look, so I did a quick search.
I found an animation of the eclipse at timeandate.com and was able to select my location so that I would have accurate information as to where to look.
At this point I went outside and the clouds had moved out of the way and I could see just a sliver of white left.
A few minutes later the moon had totally slipped within the umbra of the Earth.
The red color of the moon started to deepen as it further went inside the umbra.
This is the location of the moon at the maximum eclipse. You can see that it is not centered in the umbra, but since the umbra is quite large there was still quite a bit of time when it was in total eclipse.
I went outside at this time and the moon was behind a bank of clouds.
About 20 minutes later I went back outside to look again to see if I could see the moon.
The sky was clear again and I quickly took a picture with my iPhone. It is not the best, but you can see that the moon is red.
I popped outside again just a few minutes later to see if the moon was starting to move out of the umbra. Unfortunately the moon had again slipped behind the clouds and it started to sprinkle. The rain was soon steady and that ended the show for the night.
I did not get to see the moon start to come out of the umbra and start turning white again.
Oh, and the earthquake that I mentioned in the title? While watching the eclipse I received an earthquake notification. It was just a small little 3.3 and quite far away, but it did happen during the partial eclipse. I am sure if someone was close to Lake Almanor Peninsula and felt the earth move while watching the eclipse that they would have been a bit concerned.
So, not the best viewing experience tonight but always nice to observe another eclipse.
Steven
For some old eclipse pictures see:
