Partial Lunar Eclipse Live Webcast

Via this post on the SPA BB:

2008 AUGUST 16 -- PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE
Webcast live from Peter Grego at St Dennis, Cornwall

I will be producing a live webcast of the partial lunar eclipse on the evening of 16 August on my website www.lunarobservers.com. The webcast takes place from 19:30 to 22:45 UT (8:30 to 11:45 pm BST). Images are updated every 20 seconds when live (640x480 resolution). The umbral phase of the eclipse lasts from 8:36 until 11:44 pm BST. If the event is clouded out a real-time computer simulation of the eclipse will be broadcast.

More details over here.

Next week's lunar eclipse

I'm not sure if I'll get to observe next week's total lunar eclipse (assuming the weather will be fine) due to the fact that a) it's during the working week and b) all the fun stuff happens at silly hours. Which is sort of annoying given just how enjoyable the last one was (even if I did manage to destroy a pair of glasses).

However, if anyone is thinking of staying up for it, you might find this article by the Society for Popular Astronomy useful as it as all the information you'll need. This includes details of the planned LunarObservers.com live webcast.

Shooting the Moon

Just recently I purchased a second lens (a Tamron AF 55-200mm f4.5-5.6 Di II LD) for my Canon EOS 400D. It wasn't until yesterday that I managed to give it a proper test.

Just before bedtime I noticed it was clear and that the Moon was pretty high so I thought it would be interesting to see how large it appears when captured with the new lens attached (previous efforts amply demonstrated that — no surprises here — the Moon doesn't appear very large at 55mm). So I wandered outside, set the lens to 200m and ran off some shots hand-held.

The result isn't actually that bad. If I'm in a position to observe the lunar eclipse next month (during the week, during the early hours of the morning, typical!) it might be worth trying to get a few shots.

Of course, now, I'm wishing for a 300mm lens. ;-)

More mobile phone astrophotography

Anyone who has read this blog for a while now will know that, on occasion, I've had a silly moment and tried to use the camera in a mobile phone to grab images of what I was observing (things like the Sun, Mars, the Moon, the partially eclipsed Moon, Saturn and even the Moon and Saturn together).

I've never had that much success, the images have never been that good (neither has the equipment) and, in each case, it's always been more about being a bit silly than about trying to get a useful image.

However, Ian Musgrave has, to my eyes, managed to capture an astonishingly good image of the Moon with his mobile phone.

Even more astonishing is his image of Jupiter. While the planet itself is devoid of any detail, he's managed to pick up three of Jupiter's moons.

On a mobile phone!

Not Just Red - Infrared!

Once again Pete Lawrence comes up with an interesting spin on astrophotography. Via this article on the SPA BB:

The eclipsed Moon was quite dim in visible light but reasonably bright in IR. I managed to grab 4 quadrant shots of the Moon at the time of totality, mosaic them together and then overlay a DSLR colour shot on to. In this way the IR provides the luminance information while the DSLR shot provides colour. The result is an IR biased colour shot of totality. As the IR signal was reasonably bright, the details on the Moon could be imaged with a reasonable amount of sharpness.

2007-03-03_23-28-20_IR742-natural.jpg

Lunar Eclipse Movie

Tim Haynes (friend and BOFH for the machine I host my websites on) was also out on Saturday night, observing and photographing the total lunar eclipse.

Not only did he take a whole load of images of the event, he also produced a pretty neat video of it too:

It's a shame that the Moon has got squashed in the YouTube version (the original looks better) but, that aside, I think it's a pretty neat record of the event.

What the hell is happening?

After reading this entry on Rich Daley's blog I was reminded of something I was thinking about on Saturday night.

What do people who have no knowledge or interest in astronomy make of something like a total lunar eclipse? Here in the UK you'd be hard pushed to find someone who didn't know that a total solar eclipse was coming, it's such a rare occurrence that it would be reported everywhere for days prior to the event (as it was in 1999). Most partial solar eclipses won't be noticed, most people who haven't been told about it won't know it's happening.

Partial lunar eclipses probably aren't noticed either, I'm guessing that most people, even if they noticed that part of the Moon was missing, would assume it's just one of the Moon's phases (it's not uncommon for people to think that the Earth's shadow is responsible for the Moon's phases).

But a total lunar eclipse seems a little different to me. It's one of those events that can be reported in such a way that people don't know it's happening (personally I only ever saw mention of Saturday's eclipse, in passing, during weather reports on the BBC news) while, at the same time, is very obvious to the naked eye – if you were out and about on Saturday night you'd be hard pushed not to notice that the Moon was full but wasn't bright and was a very strange colour.

I wonder what Rich's bouncer was really thinking. I wonder what ideas had gone through his mind. I wonder what possible reasons he'd entertained. I wonder how many other people were in the same position last Saturday, faced with something out of the ordinary, something impossible to ignore, something needing an explanation. I wonder what hypotheses they entertained.

Lunar Eclipse 2007-03-03 - Log now up

I've now uploaded my observing log of the total lunar eclipse.

Lunar Eclipse 2007-03-03

As I'd hoped a couple of days earlier the weather played ball and last Saturday night was nice and clear.

So I got to observe the whole of the total lunar eclipse. For some detail of my observing session have a look at the short report I wrote on the SPA BB this morning – I'll be adding my full observing log later on today.

I didn't bother to attempt any photography (other than a few afocal shots with my mobile phone, through the Antares 905 – a small example can be seen above), I just wanted to observe and enjoy the whole event (and it's not like it wasn't going to get photographed by anyone else <g>).

I thought totality was reasonably dark, personally I'd rate it as L2 on the Danjon Scale.

Just one downside to the whole event: I managed to stand on my glasses and scratch them so badly that they're not really useful any more. Thanks to that I think this has been my most expensive observing session yet. It was also kind of annoying to find myself observing a great naked-eye event and find that the only bit of optical equipment I had with me that wasn't working was.... my eyes.

There was a nice little bonus to the whole evening though. After we'd packed up (after last umbral contact), and because there was so much dew on the grass, I stood with my back to the full Moon and noticed a nice, if faint, example of Heiligenschein.

Welcome to March

So, it's March again. March is sort of important to me in astronomy for a few reasons:

• I purchased my Sky-Watcher Explorer 130M in March 2005.


• I Purchased my Antares 905 in March 2006.


• I started regular solar observing in March 2006.


• I observed my first partial solar eclipse (first since starting to keep observing logs) in March 2006.

All being well March should be good this year too. First up, weather permitting, is Saturday's lunar eclipse. The current forecast from the Met Office is for clear skies on Saturday night.

Secondly, a week on Saturday, it's the 2^nd SPA convention. I'm really looking forward to that. The first one in October 2005 was very enjoyable so I'm expecting this to be a good day out too.

So far it's been a terrible start to the year, other than a couple of brief views of comet McNaught, and a brief session observing the Moon and Saturn, I've hardly been out so far this year. I'm hoping that the next two or three months offer up some good nights before the long days of summer take over.

Next week's lunar eclipse

Like Will, I'm already thinking about observing next week's lunar eclipse.

All being well, weather permitting (sadly the 6 to 15 day forecast from the Met Office doesn't give much of a clue about what to expect), I'm hoping to join a fellow observer a Woodland Waters (somewhere we've used once so far and were very happy with). The horizon there is pretty good and should give an unobstructed view of the whole event.

Even though I now own a dSLR it's unlikely that I'll be taking any photographs of the event due to the fact that I don't have the kinds of equipment that make it worth it, although I might try something — during the last lunar eclipse the fact that I only had a compact digital camera didn't stop me from trying to make some sort of photographic record.

Visually I'll probably be using a 10x50 binocular and the Antares 905. Pretty much all of my observing will be visual and, of course, I'll be keeping a written record of the event.

Fingers crossed that the weather plays ball again...