Earth’s long shadow

Humans witnessed Earth’s immense shadow Sunday night as it obscured the moon during a full lunar eclipse.

In Wyoming, clear skies made for exceptional viewing of the event, which was visible as soon as the moon began to rise around 8:30 p.m. At that point, the Earth’s shadow already darkened a small portion of the full moon. For roughly the next 60 minutes, the moon moved into the full umbral shadow of the Earth, which gave it a dark chestnut hue not unlike Wyoming’s red dirt.

With cooperative weather, the eclipse was visible with the naked eye. However some, like Charlotte Belton of Sheridan, (who serves on WyoFile’s board) set up telescopes or watched through binoculars.

Belton captured these images by pointing her iPhone at the telescope, she said. She particularly likes an image taken before totality, in which the moon appears to have Saturn-like rings, she said.

Totality lasted more than an hour, giving viewers plenty of time to gaze and ponder the immense scope of the universe.