Amateur astronomers, stargazers and folks who stayed up late anyway were poised to experience a full lunar eclipse early Saturday morning.
Hawaii was the best seat in the country for viewing the eclipse, according to the Bishop Museum’s J. Watumull Planetarium, and those who missed it won’t get the same opportunity until Jan. 30, 2018.
Friday afternoon, Andrew Cooper, president of the West Hawaii Astronomy Club, was worried about a forecast of high clouds gathering in the night. But that wasn’t keeping him from planning a nighttime trip to Kohala Mountain Road to experience an event expected to go into full force between 1 and 2 a.m.
“I wanted to do some time-lapse video of the eclipse sweeping over the landscape,” said Cooper, an engineer at the W.M. Keck Observatory.
Other members of the astronomy club were set to gather in Waikoloa Friday night to view the spectacle, in which the moon becomes copper or red-colored. During a lunar eclipse, the Earth stands between the moon and the sun, and the Earth’s atmosphere filters out other parts of the light spectrum, leaving the red color.
Derek Wroe, forecaster with the National Weather Service in Honolulu, said that high clouds were indeed forecast to gather over the island tonight, but he doubted they would be thick enough to completely obscure the view.
The event marked the third of four total lunar eclipses in a row beginning last April 14. Hawaii enjoyed good views of the moon’s shift to red during these first eclipses, but the fourth, set for Sept. 27, will not be visible from our islands in the Pacific.
The total phase of the eclipse — lasting less than five minutes, from 1:58 to 2:02 a.m. — was the shortest since the year 1529, according to the Bishop Museum. The eclipse technically got underway at 11:01 p.m., but the effects of the moon sliding into the Earth’s deep inner shadow were not noticeable until after midnight.
The visible portion of the eclipse concluded at 3:44 a.m.