Lunas Eclipse on December 20th and 21st, 2010 Viewing Together in Salt Lake City area

This post is meant more for local people in the Salt Lake City area. Sorry if your outside of that but I encourage you to do something similar where you live if you can see this event on December 20th and 21st.

So I am just wondering if anyone is wanting to meet locally to view this lunar eclipse, weather permitting? Naked eye is probably best but I think I may just bring my 10inch scope out to see what the view is like on some craters as the eclipse moves across the moon. If your interested please reply so I can gauge interest and perhaps pick a good spot in the Salt Lake Valley to view this. Your can see from this table from Wiki (we are the MST -7 UTC or second column from the left) that it will be a late night if you want to view this. You can see the beginning stages from 10:27p.m. til 12:40a.m. with totality starting at 12:40a.m. and lasting until 1:17a.m. That's about as late as I'll go because I have to work the next day. Anyone interested?

Event	PST (-8 UTC)	MST (-7 UTC)	CST (-6 UTC)	EST (-5 UTC)
Start penumbral (P1)	9:27 pm (*)	10:27 pm (*)	11:27 pm (*)	12:27 am
Start umbral (U1)	10:32 pm (*)	11:32 pm (*)	12:32 am	1:32 am
Start total (U2)	11:40 pm (*)	12:40 am	1:40 am	2:40 am
Greatest eclipse	12:17 am	1:17 am	2:17 am	3:17 am
End total (U3)	12:53 am	1:53 am	2:53 am	3:53 am
End umbra (U4)	2:02 am	3:02 am	4:02 am	5:02 am
End penumbral (P4)	3:06 am	4:06 am	5:06 am	6:06 am
(*) before midnight on Monday night, December 20

November 2010 Observation and Sketch of Messier 31

I guess I need to find more material to post because I just am not having any luck with the weather. I had planned on doing some observing on Sunday night from my backyard but instead of clear weather, we had a very thick fog that came and went. Now the inversion but what is really smaug is settling into the valley and the pollutants are not good for any mirror. So my mountain sites just aren't coming around for observing yet for the winter, so not much else has happen. I did get down to the family cabin as we had yet another member of the family pass away (two in a month). So I got some time in and here is what I produced. Not much, and I am not happy with it. I can tell how far I've come from sketching large objects like Messier 42, or the Double Double or Messier 31. Yet when I sketch these and other large objects it tells me how far I have to go to being a really good sketcher and that is a FAR way away. That's okay because I really do enjoy doing it.

Messier 31, The Andromeda Galaxy and a few companions. As mentioned I used a wide field view and then the 14mm and 10mm Pentax for this sketch.
































I did a further update of the sketch tonight and think I like the version below a little better. You can decide and leave a comment if you want.































Sigh, as soon as the weather pattern changes I'll be out, even if it is with a waxing moon since I need about 20 open clusters. Anyone else getting out this winter?