Soon we were set up. A very low horizon stretched 360º around us. The moon shone brightly in
a light blue sky that was dotted only by first and second magnitude stars.Fellow Toronto Centre member Steve Chomniak joined me for the December 30th, 1982 total lunar eclipose at my parents' farm, 15 miles north-east of Belleville. With him, he brought a freshly gas-hypered stockpile of Kodachrome 25 and Ektachrome 200. There was only one thing missing: a clear sky...
One hour before the eclipse, I looked out the window. The sky was absolutely cloudless! Going outside, we discovered a very cold, strong north-westerly wind. However, this did not deter us in any way, and we immediately started across the hayfield to our equipment.
Soon we were set up. A very low horizon stretched 360º around us. The moon shone brightly in
a light blue sky that was dotted only by first and second magnitude stars.
We had to warm up in the car four times as first the penumbra and then the umbra advanced across the face of the moon. Our cameras clicked away. On the radio set up behind us, we occasionally heard something about the eclipse. The anticipation grew. Adrenylin surged through our veins. We feld no fatigue -- not even the cold.
In the final minutes before totality, the light level dropped abruptly several times. Around us, the landscape darkened and a vast multitude of stars burst forth from the sky. Flashlights had now become a necessity as the moon, our sole source of light, was slowly extinguished.
Then -- totality. In a very few moments we terminated the furious activity of our cameras with the relative calm of a fifteen minute exposure.
It was then that we beheld a magnificent visual spectacle unrecordable by any
camera or other sensing device. The pale orb of the moon floated in the midst of the Gemini Milky Way in 3D relief. A surge of colour spread across the full lower half of the moon like a million
tiny volcanoes erupting blood-red lava.
On the point of frost-bit, we ran back to the house as fast as our half-frozen bodies would take us. Sticking our feet in the oven of the old "Findlay Oval" wood stove, we decided to make our 15 minute expsoure one of 20 minutes instead.
After some hot chocolate and coffee, we raced back across the hayfield, this time to close the shutters on the cameras. The moon still floated in 3D, and the radio was buzzing with descriptions of totality. Saturn and Jupiter had risen in the south-east and I took their pictures in the encroaching daybreak.
As totality drew to a close, the cameras that had been doing three-hour trail exposures were shut down and the others, once again, started clicking. The moon slowly left the umbra, and in the growing daylight the cameras kept clicking as the moon set over a farmhouse in the north-west.
As we watched elsewhere in the sky, the last stars diapeared, and as a grand finale to a spectacle of grandest proportions, the sun rose in the south-east, following the moon and the stars.
Our hands were now so completely frozen that we could not take down our equipment until after breakfast. Fatigue started to set in, but with it came the knowledge that all of our planning and preparation had payed off. And with this knowledge came satisfaction and patience enough to be content with the long wait for August 16, 1989 -- our next total lunar eclipse.