embedded in the floating world
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nmazca.blog embedded in the floating world |
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 Jarle Aasland So I didn't get home this morning until sometime after 1 a.m. I'd been listening to Steve Roach's Midnight Moon since 7 p.m. (something of a full moon habit). After I put down my things, I slapped it into the CD player on the kitchen table as I heated tea water and got ready for a nap. And a nap was all I was going to get, even after 19 hours on the move, because the penumbral eclipse was going to begin around 4:30... and I like to witness as much of these events as I can. Fell asleep amid copal streamers and space music. Awoke from a journeying dream around a quarter after four. I had opened the curtain before I got into the bed, so that the moon's light could shine into the room. I looked up into the dark blue sky as soon as I stood up, but by that time the moon was blocked by the adjoining building. I threw on green pajama pants and an orange shirt. I climbed the ladder to the roof, where I could see that the partial eclipse was in progress. I quickly came back down, loaded the camera, screwed in the tripod, and then headed out into the street. And that's where I began to make exposures: kneeling on the gritty asphalt right in front of the building.  A quarter of the moon's face was in shadow by that time. The moon seemed to be descending at a faster-than-normal rate, but when you're looking for a shot and that shot is of an eclipse, time can get a little funny. I eventually settled in across the street, near the Al Muntazah Park for Families. I had the dwindling crescent framed with some palm trees. I alternated between auto exposure and aperture-priority at 1/90, just to see which would produce a more even exposure (Note: the large image above is from Norway).  I took the mobile out of my bag at 5:09, 14 minutes before totality was to begin. The principal called a minute or so later, wanting to know if I was out of bed. I'd reminded her about the eclipse the previous morning. I'd even asked about ambling over at 5 a.m. so that we could watch the spectacle from her roof. But I'd decided that the moon was moving too fast, and the shadow was descending even faster, and I didn't want to miss the transition from full obscuration to the warm orange glow.  In the end, this didn't matter. While I was still able to see the hair-thin crescent on my own at 5:17, I couldn't spot it in the viewfinder. I moved closer to the trees at that point, and I think that obscured my view even more. 5:23 came and went, and I was craning and weaving to see some sign of the tinted moon. Nuthin'. It seems to have either descended behind a structure or tree line, or into the haze above the horizon.  I considered scrambling up the scaffolding of a nearby construction site, but I thought "Little sleep, some awkward gear (that doesn't belong to me), I'm wearing unstrapped sandals: Not the best idea." And so I gave in, relished the wonder of what I had been able to se, and then I went back inside to bask in the mental afterglow. It made sense that I wasn't able to see totality, when I thought about things over breakfast. The moon wasn't truly full until 0607 AST, which was sometime around or after sunrise. Totality coincides with the truly full phase... the full moon sets as the sun rises... so no dice for Doha.  The total lunar eclipse of October 27, captured by Rob Ratkowski in Hawai'i [There'll be a penumbral luneclipse in the Western States on April 24 ... an annular soleclipse on October 3 over North and East Africa ... a deeper penumbral lunar on October 17 above the Pacific Rim ... [And then there's the big event that I've been going on about for almost five years: 29 March 2006 Total Solar Eclipse over West Africa, the Sahara, Libya, Turkey and the northern Caspian region] Al Qamar in eclipse |
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