Total Lunar Eclipse Set To Wow Star Gazers, Clear Skies Willing (reuters.com)

Astronomy buffs across the United States have been promised all the makings of a spectacular total lunar eclipse on Sunday except one -- clear skies. From a report: Star gazers from Los Angeles to New York will keep their eyes on the sky for the eclipse, known as a super blood wolf moon, expected to appear at 11:41 p.m. EST. Although it is a total eclipse, the moon will never go completely dark but rather take on a coppery red glow -- called a blood moon. It is also a full moon that is especially close to Earth, called a supermoon.

And since it appears in January, when wolves howled in hunger outside villages, it has earned the name wolf moon, according to The Farmers Almanac. But no matter how perfectly the stars align for this stellar event, the thrill or disappointment of the evening really depends on one thing: the weather.

Comments

Re:it was cool

[Mashiki]

Completely clear skies, a tad cold [46F], camera would not pick it up well, but worth the watch. The red part was cool too :)

You're calling 46F cold, that's short sleeves weather. It was -31C(-24F) tonight, with 40% humidity and no cloud cover which made for excellent watching. In this neck of the woods it's almost always overcast in the winter.

Perfect here

[Orgasmatron]

Well, it is 6 below zero (F), but the skies were perfectly clear for me. I was worried because the forecast for tonight has been saying "overcast" for days.

It wasn't nearly as impressive as the solar eclipse of 2017, but still pretty neat.

We've got snow cover here, so it is surprisingly bright with a full moon - enough light to read a book by, or drive without your headlights. As the penumbra moved in, I couldn't tell any difference looking at the moon, but I did notice that it was getting dark out. As the umbra moved in, it was plainly visible, and kinda screwy-looking. Many years ago, I got in the habit of reading partial phases of the moon as a pointer towards the present position of the sun, so it was odd that to me, the moon looked like it was pointing to a sun just under the northwest horizon.