January 31, 2018

Super Blue Moon Lunar Eclipse Gallery

I learned a few things this morning.

  • My tripod sucks. But do I really want to spend a ton of money for a new one?
  • However, my beanbag came through. Yay beanbag!
  • There are too many damn trees in my neighborhood.
  • As usual my camera’s resolution at full zoom is terrible. But is this the lens or the aggressive JPEG processing? I took a bunch of pictures in RAW mode, and if I ever upgrade Photoshop to handle my camera’s format I’ll find out.

Still and all, I got pictures. Not great pictures, but they show what things looked like here on the West Coast. Here they are.

1. Moonrise, nine hours before the eclipse. 5:27 pm PST.

2. The start of the eclipse. 4:22 am PST.

3. Nearly full. 4:57 am PST.

4. Totality. 5:26 am PST.

5. Coming out of totality as the morning sky starts to lighten. 6:02 am PST.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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