From Spaceweather.com
TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE: Earlier today, for the first time in 372 years, a total lunar eclipse occurred on the date of the northern winter solstice. Observers in North America were favored with an overhead view as the full Moon slipped in and out of Earth’s eerie red shadow. Jonathan Sabin sends this picture from Ellenton, Florida:
Photo details: 10″ Meade LX200, Nikon D300, prime focus,ISO 1250, 2s exposure
“It was an absolutely gorgeous night for an eclipse!” says Sabin.
Sabin’s photo captured not only the red light at the core of Earth’s shadow caused by sunlight filtering through the stratosphere, but also the “turquoise fringe” caused by our planet’s ozone layer. Pictures like this are golden for researchers who look at the colors of eclipses to diagnose the state of Earth’s atmosphere. See “All-Clear in the Stratosphere,” below.
more images: from Rod Lindley of Dallas, TX; from Kevin R. Witman of Cochranville, Pennsylvania; from John W. O’Neal, II of Amherst, Ohio; from Evan Ludes of Omaha, Nebraska; from John Stetson of Southport, CT; from Mark A. Brown of Carlisle, Pennsylvania; from Giancarlo Ubaldo Nappi of Belo Horizonte MG, Brazil; from Phil Harrington of Long Island, NY; from Mike Mezeul II of Sachse, Texas
See the Lunar Eclipse Photo Gallery
What a tease… the dance of a thousand veils! Thin overcast up to 11:00pm pst (0700 zulu, just SE of Seattle WA) gave silver fogged , cotton veil views of our orbital companion. An alarm clock driven check at 1:00 – 1:15 am provided only full overcast disappointment. My normal arising at 5:30am provided nearly clear skies and brilliant full moonlight! Of course……
The equivalent of ‘dinner and a movie, with no goodnight kiss ‘! I’m not waiting around for a 2nd date with this one…….
We in the great NW enjoyed atmospheric conditions which included cirrus, nimbus, and cumulus; stratocumulus, nimbustratus, cirrustrato humilis cumulus mediocris fractus!
That’s alright, all sunshine makes a desert. When is the next lunar eclipse? 🙂
Global Warming caused local cloudiness here in Vermont so my wife missed it. I wasn’t about to wake up that early or stay up that late to see something as common as a lunar eclipse.
Don’t forget how clear this showed the atmosphere to be – namely little blocking volcanic dust, meaning more sunshine, meaning this accounts for a portion of global warming!
We drove 160 km (100 miles) to obtain a slightly better view than our friends who stayed home in our part of the North Island of New Zealand. We caught the moon emerging from a cloud bank only a few minutes before the end of totality.
The colour was distinctly red before the limb brightened as the moon emerged from the umbra. The last two T.L.E.’s from here (August 2007, and July 2000) were both brilliant orange. The 2000 event was the longest for 131 years, and was very bright despite being very close to the centre of the umbra. The 2007 event was very similar in colour but a little darker to the naked-eye.
Last night’s eclipse was even darker still, I didn’t do a rating but my general impression is that it was slightly darker than 2007. The conclusion that I get from my three lunar eclipses from the past 11 years is that the atmosphere has become dirtier over the latter stages of the period. Nothing as bad as the dreaded Pinatubo period of the early 90’s, but definitely not as clean as 10 years ago.
After 15 successful total lunar eclipses from here over the past 43 years, I find that they are distinctive in their own way, even the black eclipse of Decmber 30th, 1982 was an intersting, if somewhat strange sight in a clear sky.
Cheers
Coops
P.G. Sharrow says:
December 21, 2010 at 10:32 am
“Now comes a week of major earthquakes”.
P.G., your science is settled! A 7.4 struck in the Bonin Islands off Japan today (or is it tomorrow?) Tsunami warning issued.
http://tinyurl.com/2arh546
For a look at the widespread seismic activity today, see:
http://tinyurl.com/2ayuqq8
Zeke the Sneak says:
December 21, 2010 at 11:46 am
“When is the next lunar eclipse? :-)”
16th June 2011.
Zeke the Sneak says:
December 21, 2010 at 11:46 am
Funny. However this was a different Lunar eclipse. Heading says a lot: “Way cool”….
Nowadays the scientific way is to be “surprised” or just to enjoy it, but nothing about what really happens. There are influences, as tides, etc. In a vibrant and energetic cosmos energies go from one place to the other, thus, some times, events are “way cool”….
I saw it this morning too and showed it for my 6 year old son who experienced his first lunar eclipse before he went to school. Here in southern Sweden it was only partial before it disappeared behind the forest. As allways it is fascinating with those rare astronomical events.
Another thing, spaceweather.com dared to mention that the reason why this eclipse is so special is the clear stratosphere due to lack of major volcanic erruptions which also may have contributed 0.2C to the global warming during the past decade.
How dare they to mention any findings of natural causes to the global warming…
We know what could/will happen with those, don’t we?
Btw, we are experiencing record cold over here. Currently the termometer reads -21C and still falling with about 1C/h. A normal 21st december day would read atmost -5C or -10C if it is really cold in the evening. We could need some of that heat piled up at Greenland and NE Canada.
The forecast for days around Toronto was that it was going to be cloudy with flurries. Then on the evening news it was announced that the cloud cover was retreating and it was going to be a clear night for viewing the eclipse. I got up at 2:15 and caught it just before it hit totality at 2:45. It was a brilliant night, even for downtown Toronto. You could see Orion in all his glory to the moon’s south. The moon was in Gemini and you could see a couple of the brighter stars like Castor and Pollux. The whole event was the best lunar eclipse I have seen and I was able to catch some of it with the camera. It was worth the fact that I am useless in the office today.
Beth Sorenstein, Alarmist Press: “Global Warming has reached the moon” scientists say after witnessing worse than they thought reddish color….
Thanks for this, I stayed up, tried to take pictures but the clouds were getting heavier as the eclipse progressed. At the start it was just a light cloud cover and I could even see a large faint ring around the moon, but when it was just about fully covered all I could see was a very small lightish smudge…disappointed I finally went to bed.
However I was fortunate enough to witness one while in Greece, May 2003 I beleive.
Was the first complete one I’d ever seen so clearly and it’s was beautiful, looked like I could pluck that reddish-orange ball right out of the sky. Was amazed at how 3-D it looked compared to the one dimentional look it normally has. Shared a bottle of wine with my significant other as we sat outside and enjoyed the whole thing…absolutely a great show.
Missed it , but with had some very boring clouds instead
Holy crap, someone sacrifice a two headed goat, QUICK! It’s a sign!
Saw it off and on going into the eclipse, but too much cloud to see it get there, still less see the colour. That’s a *very* nice pic, though – I’m sinfully jealous of the view you guys got across the Pond.
Well there are on average seven solar plus lunar eclipses each and every year; and they alternate.
So they aren’t at all uncommon; and lunar eclipses are hardly earth shattering; a good dust storm can make a nice lunar eclipse picture almost any time.
Satellites can make total solar eclipses any time they want to.
But if you saw this one; great; there’ll be another in a few months; maybe not total but it doesn’t make too much difefrence with lunars, because so much light leaks around the earth’s atmosphere.
Went out to look (west of Philly, PA, USA) and found it raw and blustery with no evidence of our vaunted Global Warming, so I retired back to my computer and found several sites streaming it live. Quite a good show.
As to the earthquake predictions, The Ö-Files has a good presentation of earthquakes from USGS 2.5+, USGS 5+, EMSC, and GFZ that you can select. The actual Live Earthquake Mashup is at Mashup Map.
Cheers!
Alas, here in so co, just before totality, to paraphrase ‘ol Blue Eyes:
“Send in the clouds”. Brief gaps, still an awsome sight. Haven’t seen
a TLE in a long time. Camera lens (and sensor) totally inadequate.
I’ll leave that to the pros.
Worth getting up at 1am!
Also really cool though o/t
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/Weather.pdf
Was very disappointed in Massachusetts to have the clouds roll in as the eclipse progressed…didn’t see much after about half-way. Not a lot of payback for staying up til 3 am and going outside in sub-freezing weather.
Hoping for better luck next time.
Rhoda R says:
December 21, 2010 at 10:41 am
“It was a glorious sight. I pity, though, our remote ancestors who suddenly saw their reliable moon goddes suddenly turn red on them. It must have been terrifying.”
Well, in comparison to their terrestrial goddesses, at least Diana only goes red for a few hours instead of a few days.
Enneagram says:
December 21, 2010 at 12:04 pm
In a vibrant and energetic cosmos energies go from one place to the other, thus, some times, events are “way cool”….
I like that. I can appreciate the sychrony or simultinaety of the solstice and the eclipse happening at the same time, UNLIKE George E Smith. 😉 Merry Christmas in our beautiful, boundless, dynamic Electric Universe.
Beautiful! We had some thin, hazy clouds, but could still see it pretty well.
My daughter commented on how cool it would have been to have these 2 events coincide with the meteor shower last week. She stayed outside for hours watching it.
Nice correlation:
The eclipse was the first total lunar eclipse to occur on the day of the Northern Winter Solstice (Southern Summer Solstice) since 1638, and only the second in the Common Era.
1638….just beginning Maunder minimum.
Down here in SoCal we had no chance to see the eclipse due to the unrelenting rains. I’m glad I got to see the one in August of 2007 while up in the Black Rock Desert for Burning Man – perfect spot for viewing it!
btw your link to spaceweather.com is bad, it links to wuwt/spaceweather instead.