Partial Lunar Eclipse on 17 August 2008 (Report)
Wow, what a night… I stayed up the whole Sunday morning just for the lunar eclipse with some friends. After that I almost slept away the whole Sunday…
On early Sunday morning, we reached our observation site in Ampang, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) about 1:30 am and the sky is slightly cloudy. We still can see the Moon clearly, but it was surrounded by a very thin layer cloud. We setup our equipment and wait…
Unfortunately, the clouds got thicker and thicker that it totally covered the Moon. And we missed most of the show when the Moon slowly moves into Earth’s shadow. Once in a while the Moon will show itself, but only for a very brief moment. We manage to catch a few pictures, but it was mostly accompanied by clouds. The irony part is that the sky opposite the Moon (i.e. the eastern sky) is soooo clear that we can even see the stars!
And then things started to change… As the time getting nearer and nearer to the greatest eclipse around 5 am, the clouds started to disperse and viola, the eclipse Moon showed itself, clearly! And this good weather maintained until the end of the eclipse. Even as the Moon is setting low near the horizon, we still can see it, which is just FANTASTIC!
We purposely go to Ampang because we want to capture the eclipse with the twin tower (KLCC) as our foreground and we did it. We are very satisfied and happy and sleepy… Give me a few days to process the images and I’ll post it here asap.
When people say “to watch the stars (in this case is the Moon) one just have to be patient”, this can’t be more true in our case. If we give up at the start of the eclipse when the clouds is so thick and it seems like it’s going to rain, then we’ll not be rewarded with such a fantastic view of the eclipse.
Stay tuned for the photos or visit APGM website for some of the eclipse photos (some members are always very efficient in processing the photos, not a bit like me that usually took a few days to do that).
My Dark Sky 