When I drove home from work between about 1:55 AM - 2:50 AM the sky was clear and moonlit, but there were major issues with low fog banks. The fog was thick in places along the roads through Adams and along Michigan Road between Adams and the Love's Truck Stop, and it was also surprisingly thick on the Interstate itself from there to Shelbyville and between Shelbyville and Fairland Road. I ended up following behind a semi-truck through a lot of stretches, concentrating on its tail lights. There was also low fog in Southeast Indianapolis all the way to my neighborhood. It was an eerie sight in the bright moonlight!
I walked out to the patio at 3:40 AM. The Moon could be seen clearly, gleaming above the foliage of the Red Maple Tree. The patio pavement wasn't too wet but everything dripped with dew. It was very tough, even high in the eastern sky, to see 3rd magnitude stars. It was chilly, but I thought that it might still be possible to see the Eclipse through the telescope from our patio. It looked like it would stay clear of the Maple foliage from there, and probably set behind the bare Scotch Pine trees.
4:00 AM Conditions - 46°F, Dew Point = 44°F, Humidity = 93%, Wind = Southwest at 7 mph, Wind Chill = 42°F, Pressure = 29.92". Interestingly, in spite of the high humidity, it looked like enough of a breeze had kicked in to clear away some of the fog that I'd seen in the air an hour before.
The Moon entered the Penumbra at 4:14 AM local time. Of course, no change was visible at that time.
I set the telescope up outside by about 4:45 AM. It was plugged in and the dew cap was on. By that time, even with the naked eye, the Moon had taken on a duller appearance than before, and there was a barely noticeable gray shading on the Southwest edge of it from the limb to Mare Humorum. It was still half an hour until first contact with the Umbra.
5:00 AM Conditions - 47°F, Dew Point 44°F, Humidity = 90%, Wind = Southwest at 8 mph, Wind Chill = 43°F, Pressure = 29.94".
I was outside to start observing at 5:05 AM. I had my digital voice recorder with me, the Nikon digital camera, and I used my cell phone as a way to keep time, since I'd broken my old watch the week before. I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and another jacket on top of that. I could see my breath in that chilly, humid air. Dew was on everything. I had a folded towel on top of the little glass-topped table that I usually set by the scope, since that table top was so wet that I didn't want to set the control paddle on it. Crickets were very quiet with only a chirp heard every now and then. Low aircraft flew over often (probably departing FedEx planes from the airport) and the him off traffic on I-65 picked up in volume as the morning went on.
When I started, the Moon, from my point of view near the kitchen door, was barely clearing the foliage of the Maple. There was a very noticeable shading now on the Southwest limb. I also noticed that the Moon had taken on a slightly white - yellow tint. This might have also been due to the light fog I was viewing it through.
It looked to me like Algol in Perseus was dimmer than usual, and might be going through an eclipse of its own. (A check of the AAVSO website showed that Beta Persei was at mid-eclipse at 7:45 UT - 3:45 AM that morning.)
Just about 30 seconds before the Partial Phase of the eclipse started, the shading on the Southwest Limb darkened to the point where it was at least as dark as Mare Humorum. Then, right on time at 5:15 AM, the limb itself started to disappear from sight as the Umbra started to take a "wide bite" out of the Moon, west of Mare Humorum. Mare Humorum itself was starting to get covered up by 5:20 AM, and the dark basin Grimaldi had disappeared by that time. I noted that though the shadow was, of course, very dark looking, it wasn't so dark that I couldn't see the limb that was covered. It was still faintly visible.
By 5:26 AM I'd tried taking my first photos with the digital camera. I'd taken 5 under 78x power but then changed eyepieces to take 5 shots using 39x power. By this time, Mare Humorum was totally covered up and a pretty good "chunk" of the Moon was missing. Interestingly, through the telescope, the leading edge of the Umbra looked darker. The limb looked lighter in color by comparison away from that leading edge.
Another interesting observation I made then was that it looked like the eastern edge of Mare Nubium was darker than it normally looked, though the Umbra edge was still not covering it. It might have been an optical illusion, though the photos I took seem to show this as well. Maybe this was because it was deep in the Penumbra?
By 5:29 AM I noted that the edge of the crater Tycho had just been touched by the Umbra, and the shadow had also almost reached the crater Kepler.
At 5:34 AM I used 102x power to view the crater Aristarchus area. It looked like the Umbra reached the western edge of Aristarchus at 5:36 AM. This crater had a very interesting appearance as the shadow approached. Instead of looking like a bright "splash" at the center of swirling rays, it looked more like a blotchy white oval, with a dark edge surrounding it. I wondered if the deep Penumbra had cut down the glare from the surrounding rays and just let the shape of the crater stand out more. Aristarchus looked entirely covered up by 5:38 AM. This crater never vanished from view; a faint oval could be seen under high power even after the edge of the Umbra had passed to its east.
I switched back to 39x power and by 5:42 AM I'd taken 11 more photos of the Moon. It still didn't look quite halfway covered up.
After taking a short break, I went back outside and by 5:59 AM I'd taken 8 more photos under 39x power. The Moon was getting very difficult to photograph by now with my Nikon camera, since well over half of it was covered by shadow and the built-in light meter wasn't compensating very well to give a clear image of it. The covered part of the Moon, with the naked eye, looked deep red in color. It appeared reddish also in the telescope, especially the Oceanus Procellarum, Mare Humorum, and Mare Nubium areas. The edge of the Umbra by this time was covering Mare Nectarus, and lay along the western edges of Mare Fecunditatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, and Mare Serenitatis.
6:00 AM Conditions - 44°F, Dew Point 43°F, Humidity = 96%, Wind = West at 8 mph, Wind Chill = 39°F, Pressure = 39.96".
At 6:03 AM I saw that the sky was now dark enough for it to look much more starry than it had before. When I'd come home and first looked at the sky, I'd had a tough time seeing anything but 2nd magnitude stars or brighter. 3rd magnitude stars were very difficult to make out. Light fog along with the bright moonlight had also been a factor. Now with more of a breeze and much less moonlight, I estimated my naked eye limit to be at least 4.5 magnitude. The Winter Constellations were really blazing away to the south and east! The Pleiades were nearly overhead. The Moon itself looked like a strange crescent with a deep red dark side to the naked eye, and from the patio it was starting to get low over the Scotch Pine trees. It still hadn't sunk behind them. It was a really awesome sight.
By that time, in the other direction over the roof of our house, the whole "bowl" of the Big Dipper could be seen, and I could see the dimmer parts of Ursa Major that looked like legs and claws to me. This reminded me that I should start observing SW Ursae Majoris again regularly before dawn, to try to catch one of its rare outbursts! Further south, the "head" of Hydra was also easy to see over the roof, and Jupiter sparkled brightly in the faint stars of Cancer between the Sickle of Leo and Gemini.
At 6:13 AM, through the telescope, I saw that Mare Crisium was now getting covered by the edge of the Umbra. Though most of the Moon was now deep in the Umbra and had taken on a dark coppery reddish color, with a brighter red color in the southern highlands and in the Oceanus Procellarum area, through the eyepiece I had no trouble seeing the outlines of the maria and also no trouble seeing the brighter craters. Copernicus, Tycho, Aristarchus, Censorinus and many others were all easy to see. The edge of the Umbra by now had taken on the appearance of looking like a fairly thin, purplish-gray line with a lighter gray right behind it! It was a spectacular sight!
There were also stars visible in low power around the Moon which would have normally been drowned out by moonlight, including a very noticeable one just off the limb near Mare Crisium. A check of my Starry Nights planetarium program showed me that this star was 5th magnitude 96 Piscium. Unfortunately, it was only after I'd finished observing that I remembered that the planet Uranus was also very close to the eclipsed Moon, and would have been easily visible in my low power eyepiece to the Southeast! I'll be kicking myself over that for some time to come.
As I watched through the eyepiece, between 6:24 AM - 6:25 AM, the last sliver of bright limb was swallowed up by Umbra and the Total Phase of the eclipse began. During the first minutes of totality I described the area between the northern and northeast limb and Mare Crisium, Mare Serenitatis, and Mare Imbrium as a very bright, light coppery color. The area that included Mare Fecunditatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, Made Serenitatis, and over through much of Mare Imbrium were a dull copper red color, and the southern highlands by the crater Tycho, the area of Mare Nubium and Mare Humorum, and Oceanus Procellarum were a bright coppery red color; much redder looking than the rest of the Moon's surface. Interestingly, the western limb past the edge of Oceanus Procellarum, looked almost silvery through the telescope to me, though this might have just been my impression since it's a lighter part of the Moon anyway. I haven't seen evidence of this on any photos I've seen of the Moon during totality. I still had no trouble making out the edges of the maria or the bright craters during this part of the eclipse.
Soon after Totality began, the Moon was so low from where I had the telescope set up on the patio that it was starting to shine from behind the bare Scotch Pine branches, so I had to end my observing and start packing up the equipment.
That was about all for observing tonight. I would have stayed up to watch the total phase end, but from where I was observing the Moon would have been out of sight through distant trees in a brightening sky.
Before ending this entry, I would like to show a series of photos taken by Mr. Jason Edward Van Osdol in Columbus, Indiana. Used by permission. Jason used a Celestron C8 Optical Tube mounted on a CGEM with a Celestron Field Reducer, and a Canon 60D using Live View to focus. I asked to use this after seeing his post in the Indiana Astronomical Society Facebook Page, since he was able to capture the eclipse in detail, and I thought that it looked very close to what I could actually see through the eyepiece visually. Also, he was able to image the later parts of the Partial Phase and the start of Totality, which my primitive setup couldn't quite handle!
All in all, this was an awesome eclipse to watch, even if I only had a clear view of the first half or so! It had been years since I'd had a view this good of a Total Lunar Eclipse. Two more will be visible in 2015 during the morning of April 4 and the evening of September 27, though the April event will occur even closer to dawn for Indiana and probably not be as showy as this one was. The September event should be easily visible from start to finish.
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