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Unusual Lunar Eclipse coming — Parallax Forums

Unusual Lunar Eclipse coming

RDL2004RDL2004 Posts: 2,554
edited 2014-10-09 01:30 in General Discussion
There's a Lunar eclipse this Wednesday, Oct. 8, very early in the morning (after midnight Tuesday). It starts here around 3 am and the Moon will set before it's over (except on the west coast). It's unusual because the eclipse will (might?) exhibit an effect called "selenelion" where both the Sun and Moon are visible at the same time. Anyway, in case you hadn't heard, here is a link to CBC News where there's more info.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/total-lunar-eclipse-on-wednesday/



The weather here is a big "maybe", rain is due Tuesday with overnight clearing. I don't know if I can get out of bed early enough to see it anyway.

Comments

  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2014-10-07 07:48
    RDL2004 wrote: »
    I don't know if I can get out of bed early enough to see it anyway.

    Thanks for the heads-up.

    I can't tell from your comment if you're an old guy like me, who is just too tired to drag his bones out of bed, or a young buck who stayed up too late partying just hours before. :)
  • MoskogMoskog Posts: 554
    edited 2014-10-07 10:57
    I've been so lucky to have seen a couple of total lunar eclipses the last few years and I'll tell you its well worth getting out of bed for! I live in an area with very limited light pollution and watching the scene through my 27x bird-scope was breathtaking.
    Sadly this time the eclipse occurs at noon time and the moon will be far below the north horizon.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,948
    edited 2014-10-07 14:02
    Hmm, sounds like the dateline will get a good viewing ...
  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2014-10-07 14:15
    No chance seeing it here:

    http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Fairfield&state=CT&site=OKX&lat=41.13&lon=-73.28#.VDRXv_ldUhY
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2014-10-07 15:55
    More on the "blood moon" at https://gma.yahoo.com/blood-moon-rising-best-time-catch-tonights-total-150318333--abc-news-topstories.html

    Here on the west coast we may have a good view of the lunar eclipse at ~2am local time, but clearly we won't see the sun simultaneously. I may have to get up to see it. Clear skies here, as usual. Not a cloud in the sky.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,948
    edited 2014-10-08 04:20
    Well it's just after midnight, thursday morning, here now. I did my first experimenting with a camera, t'was too late working out how to set it - manual settings is the only way - to catch the end of the direct sunlight on the moon. I did end up getting a few decent shots of the bloody moon though. Even got an okay video of motion across 640x480.

    Night time photography novelty! :)
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2014-10-08 04:34
    New England is not a good location to see astronomical events. I got up early and it was overcast and raining.
  • mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
    edited 2014-10-08 04:44
    Northeast Ohio:

    0530 edt it had just started and the sky was wonderfully clear. There was a small bite out of the moon.

    0640 until about 0720, we watched it as it approached totality and as it set in the quickly lightening western sky. It was pretty darn impressive...except for the stupid trees!

    We passed it on to our western neighbors. Don't screw it up, guys, I'd like to see the moon again tonight! :0)
  • davejamesdavejames Posts: 4,047
    edited 2014-10-08 08:01
    ...at 4:00AM PDT, it was beeeyoouuuuuteeful!
  • Tracy AllenTracy Allen Posts: 6,664
    edited 2014-10-08 08:02
    Remarkably the sky was clear here in the SF bay area, and remarkably I managed to wake up and pull out of bed couple of times around 3am to go out onto the deck to see a couple of stages. My favorite was the crescent just before and just after totality, dark starry sky with a bit of haze. People around here are attributing the orange tint to the Giants' win over the Nats in the division series:innocent:
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2014-10-08 08:04
    Quite good in Japan, unfortunately I almost forgot about it because I was busy but I got to see it while it was just finishing the totality (the eclipse started before sunset). Later I watched it when it was exactly half-illuminated, and got a photo of it as well. But it was a bit cloudy so I could only watch the moon momentarily.

    -Tor
  • PublisonPublison Posts: 12,366
    edited 2014-10-08 08:28
    Lucky Guys! :)
  • RDL2004RDL2004 Posts: 2,554
    edited 2014-10-08 09:00
    Instead of waking up to see it, I tried to stay awake long enough to see it. Didn't work. Oh well, maybe next time.
  • doggiedocdoggiedoc Posts: 2,243
    edited 2014-10-08 09:32
    Peaked at 6:24 here this morning. Too bad there was just enough cloudiness to obscure the details.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2014-10-08 09:43
    I was up until 4am working on a project. Saw the eclipse very clearly over a few hours. Very nice.
  • NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
    edited 2014-10-08 15:34
    No pics??? I was also up for different reasons. However, the fog here was way too dense to view.
  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
    edited 2014-10-08 20:03
    NWCCTV wrote:
    However, the fog here was way too dense to view.
    Same here on the other side of the Sound. When you wake up in the middle of the night and hear fog horns, you just know there's nothing to see in the sky.

    -Phil
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2014-10-08 21:19
    NWCCTV wrote: »
    No pics??? I was also up for different reasons. However, the fog here was way too dense to view.

    I took some burry handheld shots with my super dynamo zoom camera. Will review and see if any are worth posting.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2014-10-08 23:23
    Here's a half-blurry, post-totality handheld picture. My camera's autofocus had a bit of trouble, particularly during the totality and there wasn't much time due to clouds, so this one is the best one I could get - half of the moon still in shadow. A bit of overexposure in the bright half too.
    half-totality.jpg
    670 x 589 - 21K
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,948
    edited 2014-10-09 00:31
    Here's a couple of snaps I did. First one is a blurry one from when it was going into eclipse, I was still trying to work out how to set the camera. Third one is the full eclipse with even the nearby stars visible, exposure was at 2 seconds. I could barely see those stars at all, there was a decent amount of city lighting around.

    Second and fourth photos are of it exiting eclipse. #2 is at 1/3 sec exposure, #4 is at 1/30 sec. You can see the sunlight is more at a 45 angle than at start of eclipse. Dunno why this is.

    PS: Just into the black of the moon in photo #4 you can see a red speck. This is a permanent defect in the camera. :(
    blurry.JPG
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    fast.JPG
    640 x 561 - 59K
    slow.JPG
    466 x 479 - 67K
    full.jpg
    1024 x 768 - 14K
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2014-10-09 00:39
    Great pics, guys. Much better than mine, so I won't bother to post and embarrass myself. :)

    Note to self: Dig out the $10 tripod from Radio Shack clearance and USE IT!
  • ctwardellctwardell Posts: 1,716
    edited 2014-10-09 00:45
    Darn I missed it, sort of...

    So I was driving to work early Wednesday morning, I noticed the moon looked like a waxing crescent, thought to myself "I would have sworn it was full just last night..."

    So I saw it, just didn't realize what I saw...

    C.W.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,948
    edited 2014-10-09 01:30
    Oi! That darn forum software truncated the full eclipse image I uploaded. It was 3264x2488 and got reduced to 1024x768. It did do a good job for a 14kB result though.
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