Mindscape

Eclipse

Today, January 31, 2018, I saw my first lunar eclipse. Not only was it an eclipse, but a blue moon and a blood moon. It was pretty amazing. I was an idiot and went to be at 1:30 am, so when I got up at five to watch the eclipse I only had 3 1/2 hours of sleep. But dang was it worth it. The whole thing happened within an hour. Around 5:30, you could see the slightest hints of the eclipse starting. I took some pictures, but the quality isn't that great since it's just a crappy little phone camera, so you can't really tell in this first shot.

But around 6 am, you can start to tell the difference. Again, bad quality, but from my point of view, about 1/8 of the moon had disappeared.

Then things really start going. By 6:10, it almost looks like an inverted waxing gibbous. For a gibbous moon, it's about 3/4 full, but oval shaped, whereas this one was sort of a fat crescent.

By 6:20, it looked about like a half moon, and that's when you could see the blood moon. Contrary to popular belief, the blood moon is not red, it's actually yellow or grayish. This one was yellow. Again, it doesn't really look that great in the pic, and looks bigger than a half moon, but in my eyes it looked like a half moon.

This is also when I started taking pics with the camera on Instagram, which is way better than the regular camera for some reason. The sun started rising immediately after this, and the moon started setting. At 6:35, the moon was a legit crescent. And it was pretty low toward the ground, so I was getting concerned that it would set before I got to see the total eclipse.

By 6:40, the moon was a tiny blurry sliver, and I could barely get a pic of it, so I went through the trouble of figuring out how to circle it in the pic. This is also when I got out of my warm car and sat of the roof to try and see the last of it as it set.

And just before the moon would have set, it vanished from my sight! It was probably still visible in a telescope of something, but my human eye could not see even the tiniest bit of it, so I'm counting that as a total eclipse! I was absolutely giddy sitting on top of my car in the recreation center parking lot at my university around 6:50 in the morning. And the sun was rising, so I stuck around for that as well and got some really pretty pics.

I'm back in my dorm now, exhausted, at 7:45 am. I have to get up to go eat breakfast with my friends at 10, so I'm gonna get whatever sleep I can before then. This was seriously one of the coolest things I've ever experienced, and I'll never forget it!