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Watch my 60-second video for this post here.
Leaving Florida…Again
Following my 2025 adventure, I returned to St. Pete in Florida for two months of sidewalk astronomy in my old stomping grounds, where about 6,000 people came out to the telescope in 41 sessions (which is less than half the visitors in 2025 during this same time frame; tourism is way down and it shows).
My original plan was to leave Florida on February 23rd, but decided leaving and driving while the Moon was in the sky made no sense! But this also meant I’d have very little time to drive west to catch the Lunar Eclipse on the morning of March 3rd–which I originally intended to see from San Diego…then retracted to Sedona…then finally dropped back to outside White Sands National Park in New Mexico (which is what ended up happening and I’m so glad it did!)
With clouds and rain cutting off Friday February 27th from my sidewalk astronomy, and an uncertain cloudy forecast on Saturday February 28th, I ended up leaving on February 28th and got to New Mexico earlier than expected. I followed I-10 the entire way, going up into northern Florida, across Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, then spent the next day crossing most of Texas. Monday morning found me near Van Horn, Texas, just south of the Blue Origin launch facility (that you could see way off in the distance).
I returned to a place I had visited in June 2024 during my very first solo road trip of this caliber: the Salt Flats, which lie just outside Guadalupe Mountains National Park. This time, I had a drone, and flew a bit of the area before continuing onward.
Arriving in New Mexico
I got to New Mexico in the early afternoon on March 2nd, where went to Alamogordo to make lunch, and then spend some time putting in data and preparing for the evening, and about two hours before sunset, I visited White Sands National Park to watch sunset and moonrise.
A purple moonrise
I parked and grabbed my camera, and hiked about 20 minutes into the dunes, where the landscape of rolling dunes seems endless. As you traverse, you can see other people in the distance, little specks upon the white sand who have come out for sledding and watching the sunset as it drops behind the San Andreas Mountains.
I sat atop one of the dunes and watched the horizon change color, deepening to a burning yellow and orange. At one point, I wondered if the Moon was up yet, so turned around–and there it was, rising above the mountains to the east, a white disc set within the blue and purple Belt of Venus (Earth’s shadow) darkening above the horizon, the sands contrasting beautifully with the palette of watercolors.
Upon seeing it on the eastern side of the sky, I knew it would be only eight hours until the Moon was setting in the west and silently drifting through the shadow of the Earth.
The campground
Back in October, I hosted astronomy events in Roswell and Alamogordo for a bus tour crossing New Mexico. The second of these was at the Trinity Turtle Healing Labyrinth Campground several miles north of Alamogordo and south of Tularosa (in an aptly-named region called Alamorosa).
With White Sands not accepting backcountry permits due to ongoing campsite restoration, I settled for the night at this campground again, arriving at about 7:30pm. In the dark, I set up my telescope so I wouldn’t have to do that later in the night–a decision that I’m so happy I made.
Then it was time for bed. Two full days of driving coupled with a few hours of hiking the dunes, and needing to be awake again at 2am for the start of the eclipse, I set five alarms (just in case, of course), and went to sleep.
The cosmic dance unfolds
I only needed one alarm.
Woke up. Got ready. Grabbed the phone mount adapter and my camera, and prepped for Earth’s shadow to begin its slide over the face of the Moon. And just before 3am, the darkest part of the shadow–the umbra–appeared from the top left limb.
I took pictures from the telescope every two minutes, knowing I wanted to try for a timelapse (which you can see near the end of the 60-second video at the top of this post). Visually, the Moon darkened unnaturally, the shadow misplaced and disproportional from typical waxing phases.
Red began to appear the Moon in the telescope by 3:45am, and by 4:04am, the Moon was reddish to the naked eye, its light dimmed, shadows gone, set deep into the star-filled sky. With the darkening of the Moon came the brightening of the stars. The constellation Leo appeared around the Moon, its brightest star, Regulus, twinkling near the Lion’s back foot, with the Moon at the Lion’s Head.
The red moon phase lasted for 58 minutes, officially ending at 5:02am, but the show wasn’t over. The second umbral phase lasted until 6:17am, and at 6:33am, the Moon dropped behind the San Andreas Mountains. By this point, the sky was bright, the sun about to crest the eastern mountains. No stars, just the pinks and blues and oranges and reds of the dawn draped across the sky, lighting up the mountains in front of me. Miles away, a white line ran along the base of the mountains: the White Sands dune field.
A reminder of the journey ahead
The lunar eclipse kicked off my adventures for 2026. Now I’m back west and plan to explore this side of the country again, visiting more locations, creating more experiences, showing thousands more people the night sky above. Maybe I’ll return to St. Pete again in 2027, my personal version of snowbirding as I prepare for each year’s adventures.
Over the next two months, I’ll be visiting Sedona, San Diego, and San Francisco, with adventures as far north as Oregon and Washington toward the end of April and early May before I need to return to Arizona for the second half of May and the front half of June. I’m still in the works for what the second half of the year will look like, but I can say I’ll be in Idaho at least twice, and hoping (hoping) to get to Montana or Colorado this year. We’ll see where the adventures takes us.
This world is beautiful.
Alex
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