AMATEUR ASTRONOMY:

LUNAR ECLIPSE NOT VISIBLE IN MANITOBA:

As with so many other astronomical events the first total lunar eclipse to coincide with the winter solstice since 1638 isn't visible tonight in Winnipeg as yet more snow drifts gently down to move us to the wettest year in history. Here in the Central Time Zone the umbral phase is due to begin at 12:32 am, and totality at 1:40 am. Totality will last until 2:53 am, making this one of the longer eclipses. There are two lunar eclipses due next year, so better luck next time.

For the curious you can read all about this eclipse in a wikipedia article now on the web. The full eclipse will be basically a North American event this time around with the old world and much of South America missing large parts of the event. For places other than here in the Great Canadian Snowdrift the wikipedia article gives a chart of the phases for various time zones. A good source for viewing conditions in your locale is the Clear Dark Sky website. Much better and more detailed than the average weather report. For those diehards who just have to see something NASA will host a webcam real time version of the eclipse here. Seems like a very poor substitute to me, but to each their own. There will also be a chat room at the NASA site so you can either praise or howl about viewing conditions where you live.

All I can say is better luck next year.

AMATEUR ASTRONOMY:

YESTERDAY'S ECLIPSE IN VIDEO:

As Molly has mentioned in a previous post yesterday's (August 1) total eclipse of the Sun was not visible in most of Canada. Still, millions of people in Siberia and China got a view. Here's the intro from the Scientific Blogging Site to a video of the eclipse as it occurred in the Xingiang Uiyger Autonomous Region of northwest China earlier yesterday. See the above link for the video.

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August 1 2008 Solar Eclipse Video:
On August 1, a total solar eclipse was visible in parts of Canada, northern Greenland, the Arctic, central Russia, Mongolia and China. The eclipse swept across Earth in a narrow path that began in Canada’s northern territory of Nunavut and ended in northern China’s Silk Road region.

Though the eclipse was not visible in most of North America, NASA TV and the Exploratorium made streaming video of the event available online. The following images are taken from that video, shot from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwestern China near the Mongolian border. The sun appears differently in some of the images because of the different filters used to capture the event. Times listed are ET and approximate.

STRANGE HITS:
Molly was totally amazed by the number of hits that this blog gathered over the matter of the recent lunar eclipse, and she is only sorry that she was so surprised that she didn't give the further information provided the day before the eclipse earlier. But she never expected such a response- 387 hits in one day March 3rd for instance. I cannot understand why this blog should have become so popular over this one matter, though, in hindsight, I guess that I should have anticipated it. Full details will be posted long before the event for the next lunar eclipse coming up in August.
It was hard to keep up with the hits recorded, but some references stand out as exceptional. One was "lunar eclipse effect on squirrels". Well.... I can see why Molly's Blog should come to the top on such a search. Another was a little more strange. It read, "if the earth was tilted 45 degrees would the sun rise on Christmas day in Winnipeg Manitoba". I'm sure I could give an answer to such a question, but my curiosity is so engaged by the other question of "why" anybody should ask this question" that it's hard to get into it. Anyways, there were many other strange questions, mercifully very few of them revolving around astrology, but that was my little brush with fame, and I can't say that I am unhappy that it is gone. It was a lesson about what interests people and a reminder to give full details earlier. May I learn from this.
Molly

THE MOON AND THE LAST MINUTE:

Molly has been totally amazed by the number of hits this blog has gathered in the last few days, mostly because of a post I put up on Feb 16th about the upcoming lunar eclipse. The number of hits has been accelerating over the last few days. Yesterday there were 115, and as of 1:50 pm today there were 118 hits, almost all of them references to the eclipse. This blog's previous record for daily hits was 45. There's something about an eclipse. Most of the posts on matters astronomical that I've put up before gather 5 or 6 hits at most. This is all to the good if the public interest in sky watching is stimulated by rare events such as an eclipse, though Molly wants to emphasize that the sky is available every night for your viewing at either no cost or the cost of a cheap pair of binoculars. You don't have to invest a thousand dollars in an amateur telescope. Mine cost $450. Glad to see that there is public interest in this event from as far away as Hunan province in China. I hope it stimulates further appetite for the night sky. This blog will certainly continue in this vein.

Molly

LUNAR ECLIPSE FACTOIDS:

As a supplement to what I have already said about the upcoming lunar eclipse here are a few "factoids" that you may find of interest. First of all, the Wikipedia online encylopedia has an interesting article on this matter, but an much better source is the NASA Eclipse Home Page. It gives just as clear an explanation as the Wikipedia site and has links to many other things that the Wikipedia site lacks.

There is, by the way, a scale for the degree of "luminosity blocking' of lunar eclipses, devised by the French astronomer Andre Danjon. It is as follows:

L=0 Very dark eclipse. Moon almost invisible, especially in mid-totality.

L= 1 Dark eclipse. Gray or brown colour. Features of the Moon only distinguishable with difficulty.

L=2 Deep red or rust coloured eclipse with a very dark central part and the outer edge of the umbra relatively bright.

L=3 Brick red eclipse, usually with a bright or yellow rim.

L=4 Very bright copper red or orange eclipse with a very bright blueish rim.

It'll be interesting to see what tomorrow's eclipse turns out like. Most of the lunar eclipses that Molly has viewed have been in the L2 or l3 categories above.

Here's a brief list of some of the notable lunar eclipses in history and the events they have been associated with.

a)Oct 9th, 425 BCE, choice of Cleon in Athens

b)August 28th, 413 BCE, siege of Syracuse

c)April 15th, 406 BCE, fire in the temple of Athena in Athens

d)Sept 20th, 331 BCE, eclipse before the battle of Arbela of Alexander the Great

e)March 23rd BCE, death of Herod (note the problem with dating the birth of Christ!)

f)Sept 14th, 14 CE, death of Emperor Augustus

g)April 3rd, 33 CE, presumed death of Christ (the possible dates reported in the Bible accord with no reported solar eclipse)

h)May 22nd, 1453, fall of Constantinople

i)March 1st, 1504, eclipse reported by Columbus

j)July 31st,1776/Jan 23rd, 1777/July20th,1777/Dec 4th, 1778: eclipses reported by captain James Cook

k)Jan 15th, 1805 Lewis and Clark eclipse

l)July 4th, 1917 Lawrence of Arabia's eclipse

As a final factoid lunar eclipses are predictable because of a phenomenon known as the 'Saros cycle'. This means that these eclipses will reoccur in about 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours. This periodicity occurs because of the concurrence of three different cycles in the Moon's position vis-vis both the Sun and the Earth. The first is the "synodic period", about 29.53 days, the usual period of the Moon's revolution about the Earth. The Moon, however, makes a revolution about the Earth at an inclination of about 5 degrees relative to the Earth's path about the Sun-the ecliptic. twice during a period of 27.21 days the Moon passes through this plane where an eclipse can occur. This is known as the "draconic month". Finally, the Moon orbits the Earth at a variable distance, varying from apogee (its furthest point) and perigee its closest point in a period of 27.55 days known as the "anomalistic month". The coincidence of these three periods occurs about every 18 years and hence the recurrence of the lunar eclipses. The complication is that each turn of the Saros cycle results in a time difference of about 8 hours vis-a-vis any point of Earth. To learn more about this go to either the Wikipedia article or the NASA article on same.

Molly

MORE ON TOMORROW'S LUNAR ECLIPSE:
Molly has previously blogged on tomorrow's (March 3rd) lunar eclipse (see our February archives). To my complete astonishment perhaps hundreds of visitors, some of them from areas of the world where the eclipse will be either minimally visible or not visible at all, have come to this site looking for directions as to timing and even viewing possibilities. As a public service this is an expansion of the previous blog that will hopefully give a little more information. To begin with I made a mistake in the original post when copying the time of moonrise from the Time and Date site. Moonrise will actually occur at 6:11 pm- not 6:20 pm- as I originally said. I accidentally copied the time for March 4th from the table. The time for moonset is correct in the original post. I call for attention of readers from elsewhere in the world to the above site as, if you know your time zone, it will allow you to calculate the times for the events that I will describe below. I give the following events in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), Eastern Standard Time (EST) and Central Standard Time(CST) (our time zone here in Winnipeg).
Moon enters penumbra: 20:18 GMT/15:18 EST (3:18pm)/14:18 CST(2:18 pm)
Moon enters umbra: 21:30 GMT/16:30 EST(4:30pm)/15:30 CST(3:30 pm)
Totality begins: 22:40 GMT/17:40 EST(5:40 pm)/16:40 CST (4:40 pm)
Mid-totality: 23:21 GMT/18:21 EST (6:21 pm)/17:21 CST(5:21 pm)
Totality ends: 23:58 GMT/ 18:58 EST(6:58 pm)/ 17:58 CST(5:58 pm)
Moon leaves umbra: 1:11 (March 4th) GMT/ 20:11 (8:11 pm)EST/19:11(7:11pm)CST
Moon leaves penumbra: 2:24 GMT(March 4th)/ 21:24 (9:24pm) EST/20:24 (8:24pm) CST
As you can see, if moonrise is 6:11 pm here in Winnipeg the eclipse will already have passed totality, and all we will see is the fading of the eclipse. The event in august will be much more visible here. People further to the west such as those in Alberta and the west coast will see even less than we do, and people in East Asia will basically see nothing at all. The best viewing will be in the Middle East and Europe, but people in Newfoundland will be able to catch the eclipse at least from the beginning of totality.
More eclipse factoids later.
Molly