Beaufort gets great view of 'blood moon' total lunar eclipse

With clear skies over the area, Beaufort got a bird’s-eye view of Wednesday morning’s total lunar eclipse and the ‘blood moon’ at it’s culmination.  A blood moon occurs as sunlight refracts through the earth’s atmosphere onto the darkened moon surface giving it a coppery-red color.

This total eclipse is part of a so-called tetrad of lunar eclipses set to take place from 2014 to 2015. The first total eclipse in the tetrad took place in April 2014, and the next eclipse will occur in April 2015 with the last in the tetrad set for Sept. 2015.

Locally, the eclipse started at 5:14 Wednesday morning. The moon was midway up in the western sky at the start, and slowly sunk toward the horizon as twilight began by 6:45am.

Here are four images of Wednesday morning’s total lunar eclipse, in its stages, as seen over Shell Point, taken by Bob Sofaly. (cover photo by Dawn Ramsey)