Events in the sky are always fascinating, it's that nature thing. Nature just is fascinating. So we are lucky to have our friends the Morton's living only a block away. Allan Morton is an astronomer and has an observatory in his back yard. He keeps us posted on upcoming celestial events and is always generous about inviting us to viewings from his telescope.
On Dec. 21, 2010 he invited us to watch the total eclipse of the moon on the winter solstice, two events that rarely happen together. This is how the moon looked when we started watching. It was an extremely cold that night, you can see a ring of ice crystals around the moon called a lunar halo.
The inside of the observatory was lit with only a red light so these shots are blurry but l like the way this one turned out anyway.
We took turns watching the moon through the telescope as it went through all of it's phases until it was fully eclipsed.
The particle eclipse.
Allan repositioning the telescope.
The moon turned a beautiful orange when it was fully eclipsed. This image is amazing when it's full screen. Allan took this photo through the telescope he is an accomplished photographer as well as an astronomer.
those are really great pictures!
Posted by: nick | January 26, 2011 at 09:26 AM