At 5:17AM this morning the Lunar Eclipse was visible from PCSTATS HQ, where for your reading pleasure we work a lot of 18hr days long into the night. I snapped these shoddy images of the lunar eclipse through some leaves with a digital SLR camera, whose trusty 24-85mm lens is way better suited to up close imagery. Still, the hanging red ball in the sky that was our moon for about 4 minutes this morning is a neat sight to behold. Hopefully a few of you caught a glimpse too.

Incidently, the trick to getting something other than a white dot in the sky when taking pictures of the moon is to turn the f-stop up to 19 or 22, and use a short exposure (say a 30th or 45th of a second). It may be pitch black outside, but think of the moon as a giant light bulb in the sky, and you're trying to capture the "60Watts" written on the bottom. -Max

Professional imagery of the event is visible below. "On August 28 (early hours of the morning in North America) there will be a spectacular total lunar eclipse - that is when the Earth blocks the Sun's light from reaching the Moon, making it appear red in the sky.

For North Americans, the farther west you go the better the view. Weather permitting, observers in the Pacific Time Zone will see all stages of the event unfold - the Moon's edge will begin to intrude into the dark part of Earth's shadow very early, at 1:51 A.M. PDT. The total eclipse, with the Moon completely swallowed by the shadow, will last from 2:52 to 4:22 A.M. PDT. By 5:24 A.M. PDT (just before dawn) the last partial stage of the eclipse will end, and the show will be pretty much over."