Photos of the Tax Day Eclipse in Michigan

Tax Day Eclipse, photo by Kevin

Here in Traverse City, the weather thoughtfully brought us snow because, well, April, amiright? Thankfully, others were not so unfortunate. If Michigan in Pictures had a house astronomer, it would certainly be Kevin, and thankfully he wasn’t so unlucky. He writes:

The full moon of April lies fully eclipsed in the Earth’s shadow on a cold & snowy April morning in West Michigan.

The Full Moon of April is called the “Full Pink Moon”. The grass pink or wild ground phlox is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. This year it is also the Paschal Full Moon; the first full moon of the spring season.

About the image…

I had been waiting for this eclipse for a while, having seen my last one in 2008. Unfortunately it didn’t look like the weather was going to cooperate. The day before we had temperatures in the high 60’s with rain and thunderstorms, and the cold front went through Monday morning and dropped the temps into the 30’s. And then it started snowing in the afternoon.

I remained cautiously optimistic, and around 2.30am I could just barely see the moon through the clouds. I took a chance, packed up my cameras, and headed east to my astronomy club’s observatory. When I got there, it was completely cloudy, but I went up and opened the dome and attached my camera to one of the telescopes anyway.

Totality began just after 3.00am, and suddenly about 10 minutes later the clouds parted – I could easily seen the eclipsed moon, the star Spica nearby, and the planet Mars off to the right. I immediately started shooting, and took images at intervals – especially around mid-totality – until the clouds came in around 4.15am. That was fine, as totality ended about 10 minutes later.

I closed up, packed up, and went home. Images downloaded to the computer, quickly scanned for good ones, and here is one of the best. I’ve got a few wide-field ones I’ll put up later.

View Kevin’s photo bigger and see more in his Lunar Eclipse – April 15, 2014 set and in his massive Astronomy slideshow.

More eclipses and more on the moon at Michigan in Pictures. We’ll add links in the comments when we find more media about last night’s total eclipse.