Observing Report

Posted by Kelly Whitt Mar 3, 2007

I told my son a litlte before sunset that a lunar eclipse would be occurring tonight. The first thing he said was, "So it's a full moon?" You gotta love that kid.

He planted himself on my computer playing with the planetarium software while I paced back and forth from the office to the east-facing window, waiting for the moon to rise. There was a bank of clouds on the eastern horizon, which delayed the moon in rising. My son got off the computer long enough to ask me "Where did the sun set tonight?" so he could trace the path opposite across the sky to the other horizon to look for the moon. Again, you gotta love him!

Just as a refresher: Yes, a total lunar eclipse can only occur during full moon and it occurs when the sun and moon are opposite in our sky, allowing Earth's shadow to fall across the moon.

We finally did get a peek at the eclipsed moon, which stayed out long enough for us to watch it as we ate dinner. We saw the bright sunshine falling on a tiny portion of the lower left corner of the moon, but that was all we saw. We missed totality and all other phases of the eclipse.

For those of you who saw totality tonight, was the moon dark or did it have that lovely reddish-orange glow? I think totality is a romantic moment: all the Earth's sunrises and sunsets are glowing their ruddy hues and being refracted onto the surface of the moon. Different environmental conditions can cause different looks for a lunar eclipse. If there are a lot of pollutants, such as volcanic ash, in the Earth's atmosphere, the reddish totality phase can turn dark or even black.

I took some photos of the eclipse, but my eye's view was better. Even the zoom on my camera could not reproduce the image of seeing it live, a snippet of moon shining thinner than any crescent.

The next chance at a lunar eclipse comes on August 28. Then, instead of having the moon rise at eclipse time, it will be setting at eclipse time. I hope we have fewer clouds spoiling the fun on that day!