Did anyone see the moon this morning?

At 5:30am this morning I headed out to capture the full moon partial lunar eclipse. What I saw was the lower right corner (does the moon have corners?) being darkened red as the earth completely blocked the sunlight from that part of the lunar face. And then before I got the camera ready the clouds set in! I figured that as I had just seen the eclipse through a gap in the clouds anther gap not be far away and all I needed to do was wait.

And wait, … and wait, … and wait. While waiting I tried to capture some images of the amazing back-lit clouds but the were moving too fast and the light was so low. I knew that should a gap come at all it would be very brief and I had to be ready so I manually pre-focussed on a bright star in the already lightening pre-dawn twilight and waited.

After 45 minutes a small gap in the clouds emerged and I grabbed my shot. 20 seconds was all I got and then it was gone as the predawn light flooding in heralding the sunrise to follow.

In this image you can just make out the orange glow of the penumbral shadow over the bottom right quarter of the moon.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Day 483, Penumbral Shadow’ 1/20s f/7.1 ISO200 400mm