It was a frantic morning packing for a one-night road trip to the Eastern Sierra, to witness the total lunar eclipse occurring just before twilight, an eclipse that would graze the peaks of the Eastern Sierra before sinking from view. I didn't need an alarm clock, for the full moon was a bright beacon in my tent, and when the eclipse began, it was even more spectacular than any witnessed from the confines of a metropolis overwhelmed by light pollution.
Dark rain clouds helped gently lower the blanket of dusk on the Alabama Hills as I walked the familiar path to Mobius Arch... At first, only Mars was visible through a thin layer of high-altitude cirrus clouds. Then, whipped by the wind, the clouds raced north, Orion rose majestically in the east, and the meteors began to fall... Night turned to day for the briefest moment as each of the colorful fireballs of the Geminid meteor shower streaked across the sky, and, just as the heavenly shower was waning above, onrushing clouds wiped the slate of the sky clean of stars and a cold rain shower chased me to my car. Photographed December 2020.
Where else but the Alabama Hills to greet a lunar eclipse that began just as the sun's last rays disappeared from the land? A different approach, though... The Moon, its crimson visage barely visible, streaked across the sky, following Spica across the Zodiac, its destiny to be bright again, to exit the Earth's umbra and brighten the land below. Photographed May 2022.
