[Friends_of_SSASTROS] Notes From The Field - I Bet You Can Guess The Topic of These Notes!

[Mike McCabe]

November 8th,2022; A Totally Awesome Total Lunar Eclipse!

4:15 A.M., LakeNippnenicket in Bridgewater, MA

  Steve LaFlamme and a couple of otherfolks are already there when I pull into the parking lot on the eastern shoreof Lake Nippenicket. Steve has put word out through his various social mediaplatforms that we’d be there, but with these things you never know – especiallygiven the timing of this particular event. On the drive over I noted that thefinal stages of the penumbral phases seemed quite dark – an excellent sign ofthings to come! By the time I got my scope set up the partial phases had begunand we could already see the orange-ish hues in the eclipsed parts of the Moon.

  As time went on andthe Moon traveled deeper and deeper into Earth’s shadow, the spectacle gotprettier and prettier…and the parking lot started to fill up! Steve’sinvitations were working! I’d say that more people than I expected were willingto leave their warm beds and come out in the dark at an ungodly hour and standin a cool, steady breeze coming off of a wide open lake to join us for theviewing. You never can tell what will motivate people!
  And, they had goodattitudes to boot! Nobody was complaining, and everybody was in awe of thesight of La Luna with her orange dress on. She was beautiful and she was struttingher stuff in the blessedly clear west/northwest sky. The partial phases werebeautiful and viewed by a steady stream of guests in the eyepiece, while Steve anda couple of others concentrated on recording the amazingness with collectionsof 1’s and 0’s.
  When totalityarrived, everyone became an astrophotographer. Guest after guest made theirbest attempts at shooting the spectacle through the eyepiece with their cellphones. 
      As most everybody who has tried it knows, it’s not as easy as you’dthink it would be and it was fun watching people team up while trying andorchestrate the positioning of the camera and the tripping of the shutter. Somefolks got some amazing shots!
    By 6:00 A.M. theMoon was all but invisible! It was the center of the total phase and thedarkened Moon coupled with the civil twilight sky caused it to virtually disappear,but the Belt of Venus was stunning! All told I’d say we had about two dozen folksjoin us for what worked out to be a spectacular event…and to think that back inJanuary when I was presenting an overview of the year ahead I called this event“poorly placed for us”…maybe I thought that then, but boy was I wrong in a verygood way!
Keep Looking Up!
Mike McCabe
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