Recent lunar eclipse...

Yesterday saw a total lunar eclipse, one of the rarest of all celestial phenomenon, that was made even better by the fact that the Moon traveled through the deepest part of earth's shadow and that there was a lot of volcanic dust in the atmosphere. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are in a direct line in that order so that the Earth's shadow falls on the Moon.

As far as eclipses go, this was one to remember. 

To start with, totality was over an hour and a half long, the longest eclipse in 11 years. Why the longevity? Simple, the Moon passed right through the deepest part of Earth's shadow. By passing heart of the shadow, the eclipse would pass through the darkest region of space, and this is exactly what happened as evidenced by the deep red of mid totality. In addition, due to recent volcanic activity, the atmosphere was dusty, yet another factor that contributes to a darkness, and redness, of an eclipse.

End result: one of the darkest, and reddest, eclipses in quite some time.

Unfortunately, for those of us living in the United States, we were out of luck this time as the eclipse took place for the Eastern Hemisphere. However, thanks to digital cameras and the Internet, anyone in the world can see the eclipse photos almost as soon as they were taken and, with the profusion of high technology in 2011, the photos are numerous.

So where to find the pictures?

Of all the astronomy-themed photo websites out there, Spaceweather.com is probably the best. Online since 2001, Spaceweather may be the premiere user-generated astronomy photo website on the whole Internet. Spaceweather relies on its users to build its extensive photo galleries and people are happy to fulfill this request, submitting photos from all over the world. With nearly a decade of images, there are enough photos on Spaceweather to probably fill dozens upon dozens of hard drives.

Now, Spaceweather is not alone in posting eclipse photos. Universe Today, Space.com, Yahoo, and many other news websites have eclipse galleries of their own, each undoubtedly populated by mostly different pictures from numerous photographers.