It's Science Week at the WDB, so for your educational benefit I busted out the ole Canon SLR and snapped a few pictures of the lunar eclipse this past Friday. You're welcome.
What is a lunar eclipse you ask? It's a big shadow of the Earth, on the Moon. The Moon actually gets red for about 20 minutes while fully eclipsed. But all of these things you already knew.
But what about that smaller little star-like thing to the bottom left of the moon? Some claim that it was Saturn that we saw. Pretty convienient little story, huh? But if you take a picture using a very low-resolution camera with absolutely no light amplifications, then this is clearly NOT Saturn. You see, NO RINGS. What do I personally think it is? Well, I wont state it out loud here... but I have my theories, and let's just say they aren't very pretty.
I have stated in the past that Alex Filippenko was a phenomenal professor at Cal who starred in Astro 10 "Astronomy for Econ Majors", which I consider my favorite class that I took in college. (Heck, watch one of his lectures by clicking here. Click on the lecture titled "Lunar Phases and Glorious Eclipses". He's great.)
I also took a class on photography in the 6th grade, which I thought was very cool. So you could say these pictures are the culmination of two passing fancies that I once had, proved to be mediocre at, and subsequently quit doing. Inspirational, no?
