Partial lunar eclipse from early this morning. It rained most of the night, and I planned on just watching this one visually if the clouds broke. But the sky cleared completely a half-hour before maximum, leaving the dimmed moon in a beautiful sky full of winter stars. The sun-lit portion of the moon was not as overwhelmingly bright as I expected, so I got out the AT-65Q scope and snapped a few pictures on a fixed tripod. This is a stack of three exposures (1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 sec. in length, plus a few 1 sec. ones to bring out the stars) taken at 4:12 AM EST, about 9 minutes after the maximum of the eclipse. I adjusted the picture to try to recreate the appearance of the moon as seen with the naked eye and through binoculars.
