Blue Blood Moon Eclipse

The media had mentioned the Blue Blood Moon Eclipse that happened yesterday was a one in 150 year event.

Quick as a flash, Gen assembled her camera equipment and scoped Palm Cove as a suitable location to take photos. Palm Cove is an upmarket beach community on the Cairns North Shore, popular with joggers, visiting tourists, and the occasional croc in the stinger net, plus people like me who appreciate the laidback eateries with cocktails.


I hurried home from work to join forces with Gen and drive to Palm Cove where we set up the big lens on the camera on the beach and waited. And waited. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I noticed there was a white semicircle appearing out at sea. Within seconds, the moon was up and visible in a thin strip of clear sky otherwise overcast. Ten minutes, and the moon had disappeared into the clouds...so we thought that was to be the sum total of our moon experience and headed off for margaritas and pizza in the warm evening.

Back at home, Gen took a wander out to the deck for a last look at the sky before bed. It didn't look promising.

Then, lo and behold, the heavens were clear. The moon was shining bright. Out came the camera again on the deck for a two hour session capturing the eclipse and the blood red aftermath.

The reasons for the supershow are that the sun, earth, moon all lined up for a lunar eclipse right at the point the moon, also known as a perigee moon, was close to its nearest orbit point to the earth, thereby making it loom large.

The moon was also a 'blue moon' which applies when it is the second full moon within the month. In addition, we are one hour behind Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT), so we got to call it a blue moon, whilst the state of Victoria didn't because the time difference meant it was technically just an hour or so ahead and already into the next month of February.

The term 'blood moon' comes from the reddish glow during the umbral shadow when the sunlight shining onto the moon is going through the earth's atmosphere.

There are all sorts of technical reasons to get excited involving this and that orbiting or occluding that or this, but I'm happy to have seen the show in the still of the night with the screams of the bush curlews serenading my source of wonder until I return in my next life 150 years from now.

Meanwhile, Gen has had fun making factual, scientific composites; as well as fictional, non-scientific figments of fancy.