Lunar Eclipse 2010

Total lunar eclipses during winter in the northern hemisphere are fairly common, NASA says. However, a lunar eclipse falling precisely on the date of the solstice is quite rare.

Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory inspected a list of eclipses going back 2000 years for NASA.

"Since Year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is 1638 DEC 21," Chester said, according to NASA. "Fortunately we won't have to wait 372 years for the next one ... that will be on 2094 DEC 21."

This year's event will take 3 hours and 38 minutes. The eclipse begins on Tuesday at 1:33 a.m. ET, when the Earth's dark-red shadow will turn up on the edge of the moon, according to NASA. It will take about an hour for the shadow to cover the entire moon. Totality begins at 2:41 a.m. and lasts for 72 minutes.
(http://www.aolnews.com/2010/12/19/lunar-eclipse-december-2010-falls-on-winter-solstice/)
(http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/18/tuesday-darkest-day-years/)


I drove over to my parent's house late that night to get my lens to take pictures of the moon. Their backyard was so dark, that it was perfect for taking pictures. My mom grabbed my tripod and here are some of what I got:

Looking up through the tree branches

Zooming in a little bit. I kept getting that reflection from the moon in the sky.
Weird, but cool.

Zoomed in. I loved that we could see so many stars.
We also saw a bunch of shooting stars.
The orange is at the bottom of the moon, rather than on the right side,
only because I rotated the picture.

Since we were outside for so long, we were fortunate enough to see an owl fly into one of our trees! Then we got to listen to it "hoot" with another one in a different tree. It was seriously AMAZING!! They literally "hoot-ed"!!! Times like this remind you just how cool God is!