Last night's lunar eclipse was quite spectacular. Unfortunately because of my eye surgery, lifting anything much heavier than a pair of binoculars was out of the question. So, I took the 11x80s and my tripod out in the front yard where I had a good view as the moon came over the trees.

Start of the eclipse was supposed to be 8:14 p.m. local but it looked early to me. By 8:11, there was a slight darkening on the southwest corner of the limb. Of course, there is a large crater (Schickard) in that area that could have darkened things a little but by 8:14, there was a very noticeable bite taken out of that corner.

The rest of the eclipse went pretty much as forecast. At first it looked like the eclipse would be darker than normal but as it progressed, some surface features were still visible naked eye. By totality, the color was kind of light orange--according to others that is since I'm pretty much color blind in that part of the spectrum. But even I could see the orange shade as totality went on.

A few of our neighbors drifted by to take a look through the big binoculars throughout the evening. I was hoping to stay out until totality ended but by 9:45 my eye was hurting so I decided to call it quits.