Lots of people have sent me photos and accounts of the recent lunar eclipse (are you confusing me with that inferior spacey blog, or something?) — so I’ve put some of the good ones below the fold.
From Marcia:
From Phillip:
From Eric:
And here’s an interesting story about an eclipse.
Don’t worry, I still know that biology is much more interesting than weird rocks in the sky.
Very cool! I wish I had photographed it, but then you would see that I stayed warm inside during the eclipse.
In regard to the story, why is the edge of the earth’s shadow not a clean curve? Are those shapes the shadow of waving earthlings? Or evidence of our so-called “atmosphere” that scientists expect us to believe in?
From San Francisco.
Perhaps, but there are a lot of rocks, and many of them are exceptionally weird.
Dumb question here: Should it be possible, from the arcs of shadow in these photographs, to determine the latitude of the photographer? Would we also need the timestamp, or would that not matter?
… don’t make me go to BA and ask…
Apikoros,
The edge of Earth’s shadow is not a clean curve because of the profiles of mountains and other continental features, as well as light that’s being refracted inward due to the Earth’s atmosphere.
Ha! Still better than any pics at Phil’s site. Oh, wait, the ASTRONOMY blog has no pictures of a lunar eclipse? hahahasnork
And the crappiness of my camera comes out!
Geez.. you could have at least posted some text between theirs and mine so the contrast between them wasn’t quite so bad…
Thanks for putting up pictures, its nice to get to see the eclipse now, since I only saw it for about 3 seconds in a break in the rainclouds.
I was so excited last night to take some nice photos of the moon…… and then the clouds rolled in. FUCK!
The edge of Earth’s shadow is not a clean curve because of the profiles of mountains and other continental features
The earth has a radius of approximately 4000 miles, and its surface features vary in elevation by a maximum of about 7 miles. For the naked eye, at least, I’m doubting that mountains have any effect on the shadow of the earth cast on the moon.
But IANAScientist, and I defer to any one better informed.
I gotta theory: The Earth’s shadow is fuzzy because the sun is not a point source of light at the distances involved.
Thnx Dr Myers for the cool pictures.
Btw u hv blasphemed the planets.They don’t take it
lightly,sir ! Repent before it is too late :P
Apikoros said: “In regard to the story, why is the edge of the earth’s shadow not a clean curve? Are those shapes the shadow of waving earthlings?”
The only irregularities I can see might well be due to local atmospheric interference (same thing that blurs out stars in ground-based astronomy) and/or “bleeding” between neighboring pixels. I can’t make out any such shapes that are larger than what looks like noise.
The view of the eclipse from Montreal.
Clear skies and cold just go together (and conversely, clouds, snow & warm spells go together). Hence when it is -20C us Canucks can say, “At least it’s not snowing” and when it’s snowing we can say, “At least it’s not cold”.
I stood out in the minus twenty-something cold for at least 4 hours last night with 4 other brave souls from my astronomy club. We had a steady stream of people from just before 8:00 to almost midnight. I had a pair of 15×70 binoculars set up for those who wanted a closer look at the moon and a 12″ reflector to look at Saturn, Mars, etc. I still got lots of people who wanted to look at the moon with the telescope.
I’ve learned not to try to talk them out of it. In fact I usually just say, “Sure but you’ll be disappointed,” and then use it as an opportunity to show them how to use the finder to move the scope over to the moon themselves. After they see what I mean I send them over to use the binoculars to check out the moon & Pleiades.
You always get a few wierdos who ask questions like, “What is the astrological significance of a lunar eclipse,” and stuff like that. That just adds to the fun. I usually tell them astrology is superstitious nonsense and we’re here to do ASTRONOMY. I find it’s rare to get people who try to defend astrology, more often it seems they really are confused and think astrology & astronomy are actually related (or the same thing!).
Doing public outreach astronomy is great fun. We handed out sky maps (over 100) and Mars bars (which were frozen solid!) Business was so steady that the time went by so fast I didn’t even notice how cold I was.
here’s one great photo from March 2007:
http://spaceweather.com/eclipses/03mar07f/Hackmann1.jpg
You can actually see a little turquoise if you observed just before and after total eclipse. Light passing through the upper stratosphere penetrates the ozone layer, which absorbs red light and actually makes the passing light ray bluer. This only occurs at these moments and in the right locale.
The earth’s atmosphere scatters and refracts light as well as the sun not being a point source. The bluer light scatters more in the atmosphere (Raleigh scattering) so only the red light refracts around the atmosphere to illuminate the fully eclipsed moon for that ghostly red color.
I had to go to work right at about the moment of totality. Had to drive miles to the west, away from the moon. Life sucks.
I made PZ’s page, I’m touched!!! No honestly, my wife thinks I am “touched”, thought I was insane last night, standing out in that cold. Marcia’s shots are awesome!!!
It was worth freez’in my nutz off last night though.
Zorph,
aka, The Wingnuterer
aka, Philip (err just one ‘L’ will do, lost the other one in a tragic spelling-bee accident in grade school)
Hey Marcia,
What were you shooting with last night, very nice quality on your images.
Man, you’re brave, you stool outside last night for the whole show. I bailed after moon turned into an orange. And all this time I heard it was made of cheese, damn you scientists!!!
those aren’t my images. Just a URL I came across.
Jim: You are right about the red, but the turquoise comes from Earth’s ozone layer absorbing red sunlight while allowing blue rays to pass.
I love rocks in the sky. I especially love rocks that turn red in the middle of the night. However, I live in Texas where it rained last night. Thanks for the pictures.
I have a couple of eclipse photos up on my blog too, and 4 at my flickr account. It was too cold to linger outside to take many more.
“Man, you’re brave, you stool outside last night for the whole show.”
Man, I never stool outside once the temperature drops below zero degrees (C or F!).
I saw that this morning but I did not recognize it as an eclipse at the time until someone told me thats what it was. I am stationed in Baghdad and it was occuring just before the sun rise, all other eclipses I’ve seen happened in the states before midnight, very different.
“Man, you’re brave, you stool outside last night for the whole show.”
Man, I never stool outside once the temperature drops below zero degrees (C or F!).
Posted by: Blondin | February 21, 2008 4:16 PM
You will never hear me pass judgment on someone for their spelling and/or grammar, Blondin. Ya I know, the L and D aren’t anywhere near each other. But Hey, I’m an IT/Engineer ;-)
PS, I’m famous for my crappy spelling and grammar int Canadian Blogosphere, and as such, I have a image to live down to, or live up to? :-)
Some of those are great photos, worthy of National Geographic. My own lunar eclipse photos turned out so-so. I did get a cool night vision version of the partial eclipse.
What about the (admittedly still hypothetical, but just wait until we land a probe on Europa) biology of orgnaisms that might be living on said weird rocks.
Someone should make an animated gif of the eclipse from these pictures. Good job to everybody who stayed out to photograph the whole thing!
I stayed up, but didn’t see anything, except the occasional bit of red moonshine through some thinning of the clouds.
I wasn’t trying to pick on you, Zorpheous. I just can’t resist a crap joke when the opportunity presents itself.
Not a Proble Blondin. But as I said before, my poor spelling and grammar are almost legendary in Canadian Blogosphere. Not exactly anything to be proud of, but I think some of my readers only come around to see how I can mangle the Queen’s English each day, LOL
Astronomy Picture of the day is nice:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
I wanted to see it, but there was a horrific thunderstorm and lightning very … well you get it. it actually knocked power out around here… but my house was fine. I went out twice to see when the rain let up but it was like soup up there. I saw the one in … august? we sat outside and watched the entire thing. was quite cool.
hmm, looks just like the early stages of zebrafish development.
I should get out more…