Blood Moon

On Wednesday, the 15th of June, there was a total Lunar Eclipse.

As a hobby astronomer I was absolutely thrilled. The last time I actually watched a Lunar Eclipse is many, many years ago, when I was a child.

I was excited because I have never actually seen a Blood Moon (the Moon "turns red" once it is fully in Earth's shadow, due to the atmosphere it appears red) in

person.

The Lunar Eclipse was scheduled to begin at around 7 p.m., with the Moon beginning to enter Earth's shadow and the highlight (the appearance of the Blood Moon) was scheduled for around 10 p.m. and would last about an hour after which the Moon would move out of the shadow again.

I invited a friend over to watch the Eclipse with me and at around 10 I checked my astronomy programme (Stellarium) for the location of the Moon Rise and was more than disappointed to see that at 10 p.m. the Moon still hadn't risen above the horizon.

"Oh well", we thought, and took the dog and went to the park, strolled around and constantly searched the sky for any indication of the Eclipse.

It had been a rather cloudy day but as soon as the Sun set the clouds started to disappear so we hoped to be lucky, but at 11 p.m., the Moon still was no where to be seen.

What we DID see were the deep red clouds on the horizon, indication that the Eclipse was currently taking place and that we couldn't see it.

We weren't all too disappointed, but after 2 hours of walking around several parks we decided to go home.

I agreed to walk my friend back to his place and then take the tram back home (beca

use I was too lazy to walk all the way back through the parks again) and just when we turned onto hi

s street, peeking out between two church towers, hiding between all the city lights, was the Moon!!

It had already started to move out of the shadow, it was very cloudy/foggy (hence the blurriness) and I don't have a very good camera, but I managed to take a couple of pictures and I was happy.

The next Lunar Eclipse is scheduled for 2015, and next time, I will see it!!!!