Visitors 236
Modified 30-Oct-24
Created 28-May-21
11 photos
From my vantage point (low in the basin of the seasonally dry Frog Pond, in Portola Valley California), the full super moon sets well before the sun rises. Rising early, I photograph the eclipsed Moon as it descends behind the surrounding trees. It is a cold, dark, silent morning.
Imagine you stand on the Moon at this time, to watch the full eclipse of the Sun behind the Earth. At totality, you notice that the obscuring Earth is ringed with red fire: the atmosphere-skin catches and bends the Sun's light. So from the Moon, you see a thin ring of sunset, surrounding the dark Earth, its night facing you, its day opposite. Perhaps you can pick out some major population centers, with their artificial light.
The light from this thin sunset ring is what lights up the blood-red Moon, as seen from Earth.
I am too late for totality. There is such a difference in brightness between the crescent that is directly in sunlight, and the blood-red part lit from around the obscuring Earth, that I find it hard to show both in the same photograph.
