Total lunar eclipse: March 3rd 2007
I've been very busy for the past few days in various meetings (both useful and not so useful), so haven't had chance to add anything here. However, I had to take a couple of minutes to let you know about tomorrow's total lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse is when the Earth gets between the Sun and the Moon so stops the Moon being illuminated. Actually, the Moon does get illuminated because the Earth's atmosphere acts as a lens to bend some light around onto the Moon. As the only light reaching the Moon has gone through our atmosphere, most of the blue light will be filtered out so the Moon will probably look orangy or red.
The eclipse is visible from most of the planet apart from New Zealand, eastern Australia, Japan, Alaska and most of the Pacific. There are several images on the net showing the eclipse visibility and times (starts from 20:16 UTC on Saturday night and lasts until 02:25 UTC on Sunday morning 4th March).
Comments: Total lunar eclipse: March 3rd 2007
Hooray,
Someone has actualy explained, without pictures, (the ones I saw did not explain either) that the earth gets in between the moon and the sun. My young lad asked me what the eclipse was (I left school 35 yrs ago-could not answer for sure) I can now tell him; and you have awaken some little grey cells. Thanks
Posted by rick on Saturday 03rd Mar 2007 (22:23 UTC)
My daughter and I travelled back to London from the Midlands this evening, and have been watching the eclipse all evening, but not actually realising what it was.Thanks for the explnation. I'm a teacher and even I was finding it difficult to make sense of what I was seeing.
Nature at its best. Wonderful!
Posted by carron on Saturday 03rd Mar 2007 (22:53 UTC)
For once you get to see something I won't, hope its a good eclipse.
Posted by Ian Musgrave on Sunday 04th Mar 2007 (05:52 UTC)
Watched the eclipes from our backyard in Trinidad W.I. Totality occured from 6.30 to 7.45 p.m. The sky was cloudless and the moon was a bronze ball. It was fantastic
Posted by Kathleen on Sunday 04th Mar 2007 (10:41 UTC)
The moon glowed spectacularly over the United Kingdom. It was a mystical deep orange. It was truely a magical sight, one I will always remember. Brilliant!
Posted by Matthew on Sunday 04th Mar 2007 (10:47 UTC)
One two three four five, the moon has now disapered from sight. Six seven eight nine ten, now its coming back again. GREAT ECLIPSE!
Posted by Poem Master on Sunday 04th Mar 2007 (10:50 UTC)
Great eclipse, watched from start to finish. Things like this fascinate me. But did any of you see what looked like a UFO in the sky that night. What looked like a normal star, although very very bright, turned out to be what looked like an upside down spinning top through a high power telescope, with what looked like pulsing blue neon colours. Strange how when the eclipse was finished, this bright star thing vanished.
Posted by Shaun on Sunday 04th Mar 2007 (11:27 UTC)
I first looked at about 9:30 pm and it was about a quater of the way covered. i left it for a while and then saw a pinky orange ball like mars. Really spectacular as it was my first lunar eclipse. I looked again at about 1:00 am and it was on its last shadow
Posted by Phill on Sunday 04th Mar 2007 (16:16 UTC)
Was humbled last night. Have never had the chance to watch an eclipse in such amazing conditions. Through binoculars the moon just hung serenely in the sky. It was amazing to see stars around it that would not have been visible due to moonshine. It shows our nearest neighbour literally in a different light. In a way it altered my view of our place in the scheme of things, our rocky globe similarly hangs in a dark cold space. Lucky are we for the life envolope that provides our existence.
Posted by Ant on Sunday 04th Mar 2007 (17:37 UTC)
I was waiting for this....but i forgot to watch it yesterday...hah i have to wait for monthes till another to come in 28th august..
yup i think there is a solar eclipse coming in few weeks...19th of march...
Posted by Mundhir on Sunday 04th Mar 2007 (17:50 UTC)
I have never enjoyed an astro spectacular so much as this since I watched Neil Armstrong take that giant leap for mankind as he stepped down from the lunar module and made mankinds first imprint on the moon away back in July 1969. I watched enthralled as our old flat faced moon changed into a giant Jaffa orange floating in space. I'm so glad I made it to 77 to view this wonderful spectacle. Astrology, yes science sure but The Master's Hand is in there some where.
Posted by paddy laverty on Sunday 04th Mar 2007 (18:59 UTC)
Saw the eclipse in Gloucestershire UK, clear skys and the best total lunar eclipse i have seen. I wish I had photographed it with my tripod and 20x zoom, my last moon photos weren`t bad for normal camera.
Posted by Dave Boonage on Monday 05th Mar 2007 (10:35 UTC)
Thanks to everyone who left comments and poems (the first poem that has been added to my blog). I had a good eclipse and I'm glad so many other people enjoyed it too. As Mundhir says, there is another lunar eclipse visible on August although this can't be seen from Europe or Africa.
Posted by Stuart on Monday 05th Mar 2007 (15:03 UTC)
We watched the fantastic eclipse with a telescope and took photos with digital camera. Among the many pics, we took 2 sets of 3 sports mode photos at 23:06 and 23:07 and have a blue object appearing to move across the face of the moon but thought it just camera thing till saw SHAUN's comments.. Am interested to know if anyone else saw such things...
Posted by Sarah on Monday 12th Mar 2007 (22:37 UTC)
To be honest Sarah, I'm not entirely convinced that Shawn so something abnormal. Shawn doesn't tell us his location, the times that he saw the object, which direction he was looking in or anything identifying that might help us work out what he saw. Off the top of my head I could imagine that he was looking at Saturn - with bad seeing and a cheap telescope it may well look like a spinning top because of the rings. Saturn was not also not too far from the Moon during the eclipse. Bad seeing could also make it appear to twinkle a bit too.
Although Shawn wasn't good on the details you do provide good information about where you were looking. I have two questions though. Are the times you mention GMT? Secondly, is there any way for you to put the images online for people to see? There were a lot of people watching that eclipse so if you can confirm the time zone (and perhaps add a rough idea of latitude) it would be possible to check against others observations.
Posted by Stuart on Tuesday 13th Mar 2007 (09:20 UTC)
Thanks for your reply Stuart. Yes the time was GMT and the location was Norwich, UK. On google earth 52 38 15 44 n 1 17 50 53 e. The photos are on the url address http://s174.photobucket.com/albums/w91/elljef/ and the exact times by the digital camera are Moon1 23:06.34 Moon2 23:06.36 Moon3 23:06.38 Moon4 23:07.02 Moon5 23:07.04 Moon6 23:07.06. The camera was taking pictures in continuous mode (not sports I have been told!) as we were trying to get time lapse pics so 3 pics per press of the button. Didn't think much of it until going through them on the computer and the fact that the blue object appeared to have moved over the face of the moon over the course of the minute. If you know of anyone who has photos at that time it would be great to see if they also had it. Moon1 2 and 3 are all enlarged on the site as the object didn't show up when the original pics were uploaded.Let me know if you want any other info.
Posted by Sarah on Wednesday 14th Mar 2007 (19:42 UTC)
Sarah, thanks for sharing your pictures. It was great to see some more images of the eclipse. The first thing I'll note is that the Moon looks very blue. In real life it wasn't that colour so I think your camera may have been adjusting the white balance. I think it thought there was too much red (the Moon was orangey/red) so over did the blue a bit. Anyway, that makes me think that the blue dot in the image may not actually be blue but more white.
Now to the dot itself. It does seem really interesting and I spent a good few minutes comparing your pictures with each other. I noticed that you have cropped them in slightly different ways. However, from flipping backwards and forwards between Moon4, Moon5 and Moon6 I got a hint at what the dot may be. If you notice, the blue dot is in exactly the same location each of those images. I'll assume that you didn't use a remote shutter release/sturdy tripod (I don't use those either) so it is very unlikely for it to be an object external to the camera. I suggest that this dot may be a "warm pixel" or some dust in the camera as I have one on my digital camera - it can be quite annoying sometimes.
A warm pixel is basically when a pixel in your camera starts misbehaving and produces more electrons than its neighbours for the same amount of light. That makes that pixel look brighter than its neighbours in your pictures of faint objects. If this is the case, you should see the same bright pixel in other images of the night sky too. You could take some more pictures of the night sky with the same camera and check if you get a bright pixel in the same place.
Anyway, they are nice shots.
Posted by Stuart on Wednesday 14th Mar 2007 (22:21 UTC)
Hi Stuart, thanx for your comments. We did cover just about everything you have in your reply. The 2 sets of pictures were both much bluer than the other 60 we took over the course of the night which made us think initially it was the camera, but on the preceeding and following pics there was no sign of it. The 2 sets of photos were taken at different magnifications and i only enlarged 1 2 and 3 to show the object as it didn't come up at all on the website. The object is also proportional to the moon and not to the pics and is about 15 pixels in total in extreme magnification. However!!! We were just interested to see if anyone else had the same thing but the main thing is that we had the pleasure of seeing one of the best eclipses we could have hoped for. It's the first time we have taken such pics and get immense pleasure form re viewing them. It has given me a real sense of perspective of our actual positioning in space especially relative to the moon and that will never go away!
Posted by Sarah on Friday 16th Mar 2007 (12:49 UTC)
Hi guys - I've been searching the internet to see if anyone saw what I did that night. I was in Cancun, Mexico on March 3, 2007 and was enjoying the view from our ocean front balcony. (about 9:30pm).(I am 36, not a spring-breaker, and was not drunk). My friend and I saw a light coming from the north just below the big dipper. It was a small light, orange red in color, and it moved across the sky from north to south, but followed an erratic flight path, and as we lost visual contact with it in the south, we saw a streak of light from that point towards the northeast.
I have been sceptical about ufo's, especially any that have lights, but this was a constant light, no flashing, moving a constant speed, but not a constant path.
The flash at the end made our jaws drop, neither of us have seen anything like this. If anyone out there can confirm my story, I would love to hear from you.
Posted by Jeff on Thursday 22nd Mar 2007 (04:35 UTC)
The first of two total lunar eclipses in 2007 was unique in that it is partly visible from every continent around the world. Here are the eclipse timings for different time zones. Please make best use out of the auspicious timings.
Posted by Migliori jackpot on Tuesday 12th Aug 2008 (04:17 UTC)