Hitting the Weather Jackpot
Last night, Lisa got back from the video show in Portland just a few minutes before the lunar eclipse got to totality. She ran over to her father's house where I was still pounding away at the keyboard not paying much attention to time and briefly told me to come outside. I did so, and eventually found her in the dark field with the camera set up on a tripod taking pictures of the eclipse.
As I say in the subject line, we hit the weather jackpot here. Instead of typical Oregon winter weather (clouds, rain), we had a beautiful clear sky, temperatures about 5 C, no wind. Really wonderful conditions, although if I'd realized I'd be standing out in the cold that long, I would have put on another pair of socks and my sweater.
We stuck around for the entire hour of totality while Lisa tried various settings on the camera. We haven't downloaded the photos to my computer yet, but at least on the preview, some of the photos looked pretty good. In other cases, the exposure time was so long that the moon's image is blurred by movement.
About fifteen minutes after totality ended, the cold got to us and we packed things up and went back to the trailer to warm up. Determining that after a day of being on her feet at a trade show and an evening of taking eclipse photos, she wasn't feeling much like making dinner, we walked over to the Chinese restaurant here in Mehama and got take-out food. (Yes, Mehama is a tiny postage stamp hamlet in the Oregon countryside, and yes, it has a Chinese restaurant.) We got back home just as the last bit of the moon was coming out of eclipse.
That has got to be the best view I've ever had of a lunar eclipse. And in Oregon, in the winter, no less! Wow!
As I say in the subject line, we hit the weather jackpot here. Instead of typical Oregon winter weather (clouds, rain), we had a beautiful clear sky, temperatures about 5 C, no wind. Really wonderful conditions, although if I'd realized I'd be standing out in the cold that long, I would have put on another pair of socks and my sweater.
We stuck around for the entire hour of totality while Lisa tried various settings on the camera. We haven't downloaded the photos to my computer yet, but at least on the preview, some of the photos looked pretty good. In other cases, the exposure time was so long that the moon's image is blurred by movement.
About fifteen minutes after totality ended, the cold got to us and we packed things up and went back to the trailer to warm up. Determining that after a day of being on her feet at a trade show and an evening of taking eclipse photos, she wasn't feeling much like making dinner, we walked over to the Chinese restaurant here in Mehama and got take-out food. (Yes, Mehama is a tiny postage stamp hamlet in the Oregon countryside, and yes, it has a Chinese restaurant.) We got back home just as the last bit of the moon was coming out of eclipse.
That has got to be the best view I've ever had of a lunar eclipse. And in Oregon, in the winter, no less! Wow!