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I woke before dawn to view the lunar eclipse. An oak tree and light cloud cover obstructed the view outside my apartment, so I hopped into my car and made my way toward the Adler Planetarium at 2200 S. Lakeshore Drive.I found a crowd of roughly two-hundred gathered at Adler. Sixty-four cars and vans lined the Planetarium’s driveway, joined by a half-dozen local morning news crews and a solitary motorcycle. To my chagrin, the clouds were as troublesome at Adler as they were in Hyde Park.The Planetarium staff was busy serving coffee and doughnuts to visitors. After taking a few shots of the gathered crowd, I approached Santiago, an Adler Planetarium volunteer. He was showing a group of seven young males a star that his telescope was pointed toward–a star located over 3 billion light-years away.Casual visitors were seated along a grassy knoll that pointed toward the moon. I noticed a young man sitting by himself on the bottom edge of the knoll.

DC: Is this your first time viewing a lunar eclipse?Tom: Yes, it is.DC: Where are you from?Tom: I’m from Cleveland, OH actually.DC: Oh, wonderful, I’m from around those parts.

Tom revealed that he’s originally from a western suburb of Cleveland. He moved to Chicago on Friday to start his freshman year at Columbia College studying computer animation. He was accompanied by his roommates Nate and Tim. Tim was dressed nearly head-to-toe in black, and he sported a black FCUK hat atop his head. Tim has a talent for photography, so I asked Tim if he’d show me photographs he had taken over the course of the day. He pulled out a beautiful digital SLR camera and flipped through a roll of images he made of downtown Chicago and the eclipse. He also told me about his skill at repairing broken iPods. Working alone, he replaced his 30GB hard drive with an 80GB version.I chatted with Tom until the eclipse reached totality. The moon turned a deep orange-red in response, before turning pitch-black and disappearing completely from view. The news cameras struggled to capture the occasion. How do you represent nothingness on a television screen?When CBS News went live, the moon was obscured behind the clouds, so the production team simply replayed a clip of the moon taken from earlier in the evening. Before its departure, the WGN news van driver slowed in front of the CBS News truck.

WGN Cameraman: “Hey, check out this new van they got for me.”CBS Cameraman (shaking his head): “Wow, new paint and everything.”

All this time, Adler Planetarium staff-members are circulating through the crowd offering answers to any and all questions that were raised. A man in a safari hat conducted a countdown to the eclipse. A video clip of the event is available here.