Blood Moon - 10/07-10/08/14

It will be a full moon tonight (Octboer 8th), but it was so beautiful last night that I snapped a couple of photos of "the night before a full moon."  Earlier in the night it was a little cloudy here (Pahrump, NV) but by 11:00 pm the sky was clear.

The total lunar eclipse occurred October 8 at 3:25 am, Pacific time. This is called a blood moon because of the burnt reddish orange color caused by the alignment of the earth and sun to the moon in conjunction with the shadows cast by the earth. Today's blood moon is the second in a tetrad (4) of them occurring in 2014-15 (April 14 and October 8, 2014; April 4 and September 28, 2015). Before the 20th century, a blood moon tetrad had not occurred for the previous 300 years. Wow!

After taking a bunch of photos, most were blurry. This is the best shot I got (at around 4:15 am).

It lasted for about an hour and was very beautiful to see in person.