Partial Lunar Eclipse Photos

I managed to get up this morning for the partial lunar eclipse. I didn’t try to get up and see the whole thing but just took a few photos near the maximum eclipse (in which Earth’s shadow covered about 38% of the Moon).

First picture is with my usual setup: a Canon Digital Rebel Xti and a 70-300mm zoom lens.

I also had my Galileoscope ready to go with a webcam attached (everything was set up in my living room the night before!) I snapped a few quick pics with it as well.

I didn’t stay up too much after this. The Moon was getting low in the sky and I would have had to go somewhere else to keep taking pics as it was about to go behind some trees and a building. Nice event and can’t wait for the next total lunar eclipse!

June 4th Lunar Eclipse

With all the excitement over the upcoming Venus transit, the upcoming partial lunar eclipse has been getting short shrift. Tomorrow morning, June 4th for the U.S., the Moon will be partially covered by the Earth’s shadow. This eclipse occurs in the early morning. The penumbral portion of the eclipse begins at 8:48UT (1:48am PDT). The penumbral eclipse occurs when the Moon enters the outer portion of Earth’s shadow. It is difficult to tell much change at this point. A deep penumbral eclipse can be seen by careful observers (the Moon will dim and the quality of the light will change). You will really notice when the umbral phase begins at 9:59 UT (2:59am PDT). That’s when the Moon enters the umbra (dark portion) of Earth’s shadow and you start seeing a “bite” taken out of the Moon. Maximum eclipse occurs at 11:04UT (4:04am PDT) when about 37% of the Sun will be covered. Umbral phase ends at 12:06UT (5:06am PDT) which is just a few minutes before sunrise in Tucson. The penumbral phase ends after sunrise for the U.S. at 13:18UT (6:18 PDT). Here is a NASA graphic showing the times and path of the Moon through Earth’s shadow. Check out NASA’s page on the eclipse as well.

You might have noticed that this comes about two weeks after our annular eclipse. This is not an accident. The Moon’s orbit is tilted about five degrees with respect to the Earth-Sun plane. There are two points at which the Earth-Moon-Sun line up: one when the Moon is closer to the Sun and one when it is farther from the Sun. On May 20th, the Moon was at the point between the Earth and the Sun where it lined up. Two weeks later, the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth where they all line up.  So usually when you get a solar (or lunar) eclipse, you get the other type about two weeks later. Of course, you may be on the wrong side of the planet to see one or even both of them,but someone gets to see them!

So be sure to check out the Moon tomorrow if you hare an early riser.

My Lunar Eclipse Photos

Here are a few of my favorites from the eclipse this morning. First up, a nice wide view of a partially eclipsed Moon over some Tucson city lights.

Now a zoomed in view.

Wide view with the deep blue of early twilight.

Back to close up.

And finally, one of the last pics I got before the Moon faded from site due to the brightening sky and the increasingly eclipsed Moon.

Obviously, I didn’t see the senelion here. The Moon vanished before sunrise. I don’t see how you can see this with a totally eclipsed Moon. Maybe with a partially eclipsed Moon.  Look forward to seeing if anyone got pics of that using a fisheye lens or something similar.

Seeing the “Impossible” During Saturday’s Lunar Eclipse: The Selenelion

I just posted a blog last night about tomorrow’s lunar eclipse. It seems that on facebook and twitter, a lot of people are passing around a story about seeing an impossible site dubbed the selenelion. I am not quite sure this site is so impossible or even so rare and would love comments from other hardcore astronomers/atmospheric physics experts if my thinking is fuzzy or spot on here.

Okay, as I discussed yesterday, a lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Moon and Earth are in a perfectly straight line. Therefore, the full, eclipsed Moon should set just as the Sun rises and you don’t see them at the same time…assuming Earth has no atmosphere and you have nice flat eastern and western horizons with no buildings/trees/hills etc. But this phenomena happens every month at full Moon!  Even if you argue that it’s rare because the Moon will be eclipsed, well, every lunar eclipse happens at sunset somewhere in the world so a selenelion happens during every lunar eclipse (of course, the world is 70% ocean so you could argue that many of them occur over water where no one can see them, but it is still not a rare phenomena).

The best I can tell this is “rare” because it is happening over a heavily populated portion of the United States.

But Earth does have an atmosphere. Due to refraction of light by Earth’s atmosphere, we see the Sun rise a few minutes earlier than it should and the Moon set a few minutes later than it should. Therefore, you can see both the Sun and the full Moon in the sky at the same time even though it should be impossible if they are 180 degrees apart. This is something I have known for many years (and has been known for a long time) so no new discovery here.

So my question is, why is this such a rare event? This happens EVERY MONTH at full Moon. Even if you are at a spot on the world where the sun rises (or sets…this can happen at sunset with the full Moon rising in the east) .  Yeah, this is a cool phenomena and I am trying to figure out where I can go to attempt to see it here (lots of mountains in Tucson) because I am fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, but it is something that happens during lunar eclipse and even every full Moon!

Saturday’s Lunar Eclipse

Certain lucky people will get treated to a total lunar eclipse on Saturday, December 10th.  Unfortunately for many people living in North America, the Moon will set before the total phase of the eclipse begins. For those of us in the west, the totally eclipsed Moon will set in the west as the Sun rises in the east.

Okay, quick review. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes through Earth’s shadow. That means the Sun, Earth and Moon (in that order) are in a straight line. Lunar eclipses always happen at full Moon, but not every full Moon heralds the arrival of a lunar eclipse (the Moon’s orbit is tilted so most months it passes either slightly above or below Earth’s shadow).  A lunar eclipse is visible to everyone on the side of Earth facing away from the Sun when it occurs (in other words, on Earth’s night side).

The penumbral phase (when the Moon enters the very outer part of the shadow) starts at 11:33UT (EST you subtract five hours from UT, CST subtract six, MST subtract 7, and PST subtract 8). The outer part of the shadow is not very dark so you might not notice the Moon get slightly dimmed if you weren’t paying attention. The real action stars when the Moon enters the umbra, the dark part of Earth’s shadow at 12:45UT. You can watch the Moon get progressively more covered until totality begins at 14:06UT. Totality ends at 14:57UT, the umbral phase ends at 16:17UT and the eclipse is totally over at 17:30UT. Here is a chart from NASA that shows where the eclipse is visible.

In Tucson, sunrise on Saturday is at 7:15am, just nine minutes after totality begins at 7:06am! In reality, the Moon may set a little earlier since there are mountains to the west. I already have my spot to watch and photograph the eclipse picked out. It will be interesting trying to photograph the setting, eclipsed Moon as the sky gets progressively brighter toward sunrise. I suspect there will be lots of great photos of the eclipsed and partially eclipsed Moon setting over scenic areas (Tucson Mountains in my case).

One thing I encourage everyone to do is follow the eclipse on twitter. I did this for last December’s total lunar eclipse and it was a lot of fun. There will probably be a twitter hashtag (search for eclipse and you will find it…it might be #eclipse, #lunareclipse or something similar). People will be posting their observations, comments and pictures in real time. You can respond and converse with people about what is happening even if you can’t observe it yourself due to your location or local weather conditions. For last Decembers eclipse, there were lots of people observing and conversing, many of whom I knew personally. It was like watching the eclipse with friends even though I was alone with my camera outside my townhome.

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse Pics

I just wanted to post several pics I took of the lunar eclipse last night.  High thin clouds obscured the view at times here, but got enough holes to see quite a bit.  The clouds started thickening up a bit more right about the time of maximum eclipse when the Moon was deepest inside Earth’s shadow.

Enjoy!

The Winter Solstice Eclipse and Statistics

A lot is being made of tonight’s “rare” lunar eclipse that occurs on the Winter Solstice.  Most news reports state there hasn’t been a lunar eclipse on the solstice since 1638 to make the point that this is a rare event.

Which got me to thinking, how often would a lunar eclipse occur on any given date.  Heck, I know one has not occurred on my birthday during my lifetime.

I admittedly don’t know all the intricacies of calculating eclipse frequencies, so this is an exercise in estimation.  Eclipses can occur any month of the year as seen from this list.  Not every eclipse is total however, so let’s restrict ourselves to total lunar eclipses since that is what everyone is making such a big deal about.  They occur about every 18 months on average.  Every 100 years there are about 67 total lunar eclipses.  Let’s assume for a moment (I know this is a bad assumption) that they all occur on  different calendar date.  It would take about 550 years (well 544, but this is an estimate so close enough) for every day of the year to have on eclipse occur on that date.  In reality it will take a lot longer since many dates will have two eclipses occur on them long before the 550 years is up.  So to me, the fact that this hasn’t happened in 372 years just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me (although the solstice can vary couple of days adding another layer to the mix, it still seems well within statistical norms).

Now I have made some assumptions here…the most questionable of which is that eclipses are equally likely on any given day.  If this assumption is bad, it could make the winter solstice eclipse a more or less rare event…would take some number crunching to find out.  I found a cool catalog of 5000 years of eclipses from NASA but it’s not in nice form to easily analyze the dates.  However, during 5000 years, there were an average of 69.5 total solar eclipses per century, so my guess was pretty close!

So before you think this is a big deal, take ANY random date of the year and try and find when the last time an eclipse occurred on that date.  I bet it won’t be hard to find a date that has an interval greater than 372 years!  So enjoy it, but remember, statistically speaking, it sure looks like nothing out of the ordinary.