And a big thank you to our hosts, Harmons. In addition to dedicating a huge portion of their parking lot to the event they kept the food and drink coming throughout the evening. I don't know that we've ever been treated better at a Harmons. And a plus that the skies there, while obviously not SPOC-like, were much darker than I expected. Maybe if we need to move from Wheeler some day, the Draper Harmons might be a good in-town "dark" location. patrick On 28 Sep 2015, at 11:52, Joan Carman <jcarman6@q.com> wrote:
I was at the lunar eclipse watch at Harmon's in Draper with SLAS and 500-1000 of SLAS's closest friends. Truly a highlight was to watch the moon rise over the mountains in partial eclipse. "A first quarter moon in the east." Totally agree with Chuck, it was much darker than expected. Mentioned that to many people within earshot of my scope. Looking through a C-8 during early totality, no features on the lunar surface were visible. About 15 minutes into totality, features started to appear, but were darker than expected. Wonder how much atmosphere we were looking through made a difference. About 15 minutes into totality some features did appear. Hooked up my camera to the scope and struggled to find focus. Nothing to key into except the lunar edge. There was a hint of color to the unaided eye and photos taken by a variety of people show an orange to reddish hue. Certainly not the blood moon (except one photo Ryan has used on the SLAS facebook page, pretty thin blood on that one, but definitely red). About mid totality cirrus clouds moved it and almost obliterated the moon entirely, but they didn't last. SLC lucked out and got a visual treat last night.
Wall Street Journal has a 60 second video of the eclipse. Nicely put together.
http://www.wsj.com/video/rare-supermoon-lunar-eclipse-in-60-seconds/23E3E4BD...
for those of you, like Dave :( who missed it.