[Rockhounds] blue moon

[DonH]

John Junkroski wrote:

> It is close to 6 degrees here in northern Illinois... but it's dead  
> still and the sky is absolutely clear. I've been shooting it every  ten 
> minutes for well over an hour.


It was a comedy of errors here.  I knew it would be around 10 PM EST, 
but because I wasn't thinking clearly, I thought it would be 1 AM here. 
  I wasn't planning on seeing it.  So I went outside about 7 PM to get 
some air and saw a few neighbors out there with cameras, and looked up 
and saw the moon partially gone, and realized it would happen 3 hours 
EARLIER here.  So I ran and got my digital camera and tripod, and went 
back out.  Unfortunately I could only render the moon as a dot in my 
camera, even at full zoom.  Then I ran back inside and dug out my real 
camera, found some film in the refrigerator, unfortunately only 1 roll 
of tungsten-balanced slow-speed film for photomicrography, then found 
the battery and a telephoto lens, and went back out again.  Then I took 
a test photo and the battery died (or froze).  One of the other fellows 
had a digi-cam with a good zoom, so I'll just get some photos from him. 
  The Dutch girl upstairs came home, and I howled and chased her as she 
got out of her truck, no doubt furthering her already substantial 
disdain of Americans.  Some of the other neighbors came outside saying 
"what was THAT?" as others in the area began to howl back.  Occasional 
cars came through the parking lot, despite our efforts to make them go 
away, and we had to keep moving the tripods.  We kpet waiting for 
something exciting to appear, but once the thin edge of white moon began 
to reappear, we realized we missed the big climax.

In retrospect, some 60 minutes later, I think there were two problems: 
1) there was a very thin veil of cloud, not enough to block the view but 
enough to ruin the effect; 2) the moon appeared very small, and after 
looking at the photos that are already posted on the Internet, I can see 
that the full color effect is indeed best viewed through binoculars or a 
telescope.

Whoever hasn't seen it yet, if you're in the right time zone, good luck! 
  here it comes!

Don