News:LunarEclipse

From MariachiWiki

Lunar Eclipse at SCCC

On March 3rd, at sunset, a small but enthusiatic crowd gathered at the Suffolk County Communit College, Ammerman Campus, to observe the full lunar eclipse. This event was organized by Mike Inglis who had telescopes and binoculars at hand. Tom Madigan had a super binoculars! Initially the moon was behind the clouds and visibility was poor. Eventually the red colored moon came out and the view was spectacular. The redness is caused by sunlight that goes through earth's atmosphere.

We all wanted to photograph the moon, but had no camera with telephoto lens. So, we improvised. We used the cell phone camera to take pictures through the binoculars. The alignment proved to be a bit tricky, because the cell phone lens is tiny. Steady hands also helps. Once we learned about these, we took nice pictures. Later we used the same technique to take pictures through a small telescope. This proved to be much harder as the alignment is trickier. However, it was surprising to learn that cell phone cameras are good devices to take pictures through binoculars, or telescopes.

At aroud 7:20pm, the full eclipse started to end. Part of the moon started to show. One wonders if the moon would eclipse cosmic rays as well.