Last night, as many of you probably know, there was a partial eclipse of the full harvest moon. The harvest moon is the name for Septembers full moon, but this full moon was also a super moon, which is one that occurs when the moon is at its closest to the Earth. That means that the moon is somewhat larger and brighter than a typical full moon. So to have an eclipse of a super moon is a pretty rare phenomenon. And for once, the weather was cooperative (I’ve tried to photograph several celestial events in the past year and with the exception of the solar eclipse in April, cloud cover has prevented every single one!). The lunar eclipse happens when the Earth gets between the sun and the moon causing Earth to cast a shadow on the moon. Since the lunar eclipse is caused by a shadow, it’s not as sharp as a solar eclipse, but it was still definitely interesting.

The whole event took just over an hour (the solar eclipse took about three hours), it started with just a small sliver of moon covered in shadow. It progressed until just over one third of the moon was completely dark and about and another third was in shadow (first photo), and then it began to slide back again until just a sliver was covered again (photo above). And just for reference (and because it’s really pretty), I included a shot of the full moon about 15 minutes after the eclipse ended (photo below). As you can see, the partial lunar eclipse is not nearly as dramatic as the partial solar eclipse was, but it’s still a pretty cool phenomenon and well worth getting outside to see.