Partial Lunar Eclipse 11/19/2021

   The longest partial lunar eclipse in over 600 years took place early on this cloudy windy morning.

   I woke up around 3 AM and could see that there might be some breaks in the heavy overcast.  The photo below taken when I stepped out on my deck almost an hour before the peak of the eclipse, shows the moon more than halfway covered by the Earth's shadow.

    There was a brisk wind gusting up to 30 mph on the deck side of the house so I grabbed a tripod and went around to the front of the house to get some shelter from the breezes.

   The wide-angle shots below show the near-totally eclipsed moon among the star field in the constellation Taurus. I was hoping some of the red in the moon would show up in the photos but the color got washed out because of the long-exposure needed for the stars to appear.  

   Of course I can't step out of my house alone at 3:30 in the morning, as my dog Nico followed me out.  I gained an appreciation of her night vision when she dropped a tennis ball at my feet. An impromptu game of  fetch commenced, illuminated only by the cloud-reflected lights from the power plant over a mile away.  The low lighting didn't prevent her from short-hopping grounders on the driveway.