Photo Club Shoots for the Moon

Keith Bryant/The Weekly Vista Bella Vista/Bentonville Photography Club member Dana Johnson snaps photos of the moon mid-eclipse.
Keith Bryant/The Weekly Vista Bella Vista/Bentonville Photography Club member Dana Johnson snaps photos of the moon mid-eclipse.

A handful of cars pulled into the gas station parking lot at 4 a.m. on a cold, windy Wednesday morning, their occupants talking excitedly about where to go from there.

The quartet of photographers was looking for a relatively flat, open space to catch the entirety of the Jan. 31 lunar event -- and hoping the cloud cover might thin out. While Arkansans weren't able to see the whole thing, the moon still put on a show for this group.

Katherine Auld, who teaches at NWACC and has a bachelors and masters in geology as well as a Ph.D. in interplanetary sciences, said that this was the trifecta of interesting things the moon can do, though they rarely happen together.

This lunar event, she explained, was a combination of a supermoon, a blue moon and a blood moon or lunar eclipse.

The three occurring together, she said, has happened before more recently, but the last time it was visible in the United States was in 1886.

"It will happen again," Auld said, "but it will be years and years."

The supermoon, she explained, is caused by the moon's elliptical orbit. These happen about two to four times in a year, she said, when the full moon occurs at the same time the moon is at its closest to the planet, causing it to pour approximately 14% more light onto Earth.

A blue moon, she said, happens roughly twice a year when there are two full moons in a month.

The blood moon, or eclipse, she said, happens somewhat more irregularly. It occurs when the moon passes through Earth's shadow, taking on a red hue as sunlight goes around the planet and scatters through its atmosphere.

"All the sunsets from all over the Earth get sent to the moon and that creates that red color," Auld said.

The first part of the eclipse, she said, where one can see a the round edge of Earth's shadow, is her favorite part because it's one of the only times humans can see that the planet is round without leaving it.

And while people further West got to see a more complete eclipse, she said, Arkansans caught the eclipse just as the sun started to rise, meaning they witnessed the reddish moon against a blue morning sky.

"It was really awesome looking," Auld said.

Bella Vista/Bentonville Photography Club members John Huse, Jean Berg, Jan Halgrim and Douglas Keck caravanned around, initially looking to gaze across a pasture just outside Hiwasse, but settled on a field near the Boys and Girls Club building off Arkansas Highway 279 when the first field's view was obstructed by a tall barbed wire fence.

Shortly after arriving, they were joined by fellow photo club member Dana Johnson.

Berg said that this may be her only chance to see an eclipse like this, and going with a group added an element of fun and safety.

The camera, she said, gave her the option to bring part of the experience home.

"We like to take pictures," she said. "And sometimes we get a good one."

Huse said he's taken pictures most of his life, but gotten more serious about it recently. He's gone to gaze at eclipses before, he said, but this was the first time he's gone to catch photos of it.

"I've got enough lens to at least catch it," he said.

The challenge, he explained, was trying to balance everything on his camera -- shutter speed, ISO and the like -- while keeping the massive lens stable in the stiff breeze and keeping the moon in the frame. With a massive zoom lens on his Canon -- which forced him to manually focus his lens -- Hue was able to watch the moon move across his frame.

Moreover, he said, as the eclipse began, the moon's brightness faded, meaning the settings he dialed in would need to change to compensate.

"A full moon is the hardest," he said.

The moon shifted and changed in the sky, taking on a faint reddish hue against an increasingly blue sky only to sink into the horizon as the sun painted the clouds purple and pink on the opposite end of the sky. The photographers took a moment to talk about the experience and show off their work before packing up and parting ways.

It might be hard to get out and get to work well before sunrise, Huse said, but if he wants to see these things happen -- and get the shot -- he has to do it. And it's worth the time, he said, especially for a particularly unique event like this.

"Pictures don't always do it justice," he said, "but by the same token I want to try to get a photo that does that."

General News on 02/07/2018