By Dan Hicks

Windblown streetlight-illuminated horizontal blowing snow heralded a clearing sky and, immersed within Planet Earth’s inner shadow after midnight of March 13, our enchanting eclipsed Cranbrookian Crow Moon – high in the southern heavens and sailing smoothly along westward below Leo – our eternal celestial lion.

The winter stars and planets remained prominent, but were sinking in our western sky, as summer stars like Vega rose in the east; our ephemeral Geminian Mars-Pollux-Castor triangle had become rather more scalene. Optically enhanced, as it was through my Nikon Astronomy Binocular, our eclipsed moon was a captivating celestial sight; I steadied the binocular atop a convenient fence.

For those wondering how our total lunar eclipse of March 14 might appear as seen from the moon itself, looking back toward Cranbrook, the Fates obliged, that lunar perspective was captured from the moon’s Mare Crisium -the Sea of Crises – by the NASA Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Lunar Lander; a sight first recorded 58 years ago, on April 24, 1967 by NASA’s Surveyor 3 Lunar Lander, from volcanic basaltic Oceanus Procellarum – the Ocean of Storms – the only lava-flooded moon mare large enough to be designated as an “ocean” (2,500 km north-south; left side dark region, X-axis proximal).

Lead image: Totally eclipsed Cranbrookian Crow Moon, March 14, 00:34 MDT – eight minutes into eclipse. Mare Crisium is the dark circular area at top right; forever home of NASA Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Lander as of March 2nd, 2025. Equipment: camera Canon EOS 70D Digital SLR (2014) & lens Canon EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM (2006). Dan Hicks photo

Article Share