Tonight will be the final total lunar eclipse until 2010 and may turn the moon blood red when it is in the full umbral shadow. If you're in my area (Atlanta, Georgia) you're going to have a great view. The sky is perfectly clear and the backdrop is as dark as, well, night.
The show will start at 8:43 PM so you're going to have to decide between watching the girl's final 12 on American Idol and watch the eclipse. Unless, that is, you have a nice CCD connected to your laptop so you can watch both!
The fullness of the eclipse will be at about 10:01 and the show will be completely over around nine minutes past midnight. If you walk outside and snap a photo every 5 minutes you'll have a nice animation to play back later.
Obviously you will be able to see the full eclipse without the aid of any telescope or even binoculars. Of course those will bring the action much closer and magnify the excitement. I'll be using a pair of 10x50's and 8x32's (binoculars) to watch this one and taking some photos and video.
However there will be a nice surprise in the dark sky and that is Saturn itself. You'll want at least a small 25x telescope to see the ringed orbed but I'll be going with a full 8" refractor and an assortment of eyepieces. Unfortunately I still haven't purchased a CCD to capture images - silly me.
So I've got about 20 more minutes to have my batteries charged and some hot cocoa ready to go. Of course I'm watching the eclipse and recording American Idol!
Okay - it's 20:19EST and here are a couple of photos taken during the last 25 minutes.
