The August 28th lunar eclipse of 2007 will be a dandy for observers in western North America before and during dawn on this date. Totality runs from 2:52 a.m. to 4:22 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Observers near the West Coast will see the event in full, including all of the partial phases and the 90 minutes of totality."
The website below has a good animation that shows what this August will look like.
http://www.shadowandsubstance.com/
Don't miss the next total lunar eclipse this summer on August 28th.
Many of my students asked whay the moon turns a redish or an orange color during the eclipse. Below is an explanation from NASA.
Why isn't the moon totally dark when Earth gets between it and the sun? It's because of Earth's atmosphere. (continued below)
White light from the Sun is a mixture of all the colors of the rainbow. When a ray of "white" sunlight passes at grazing incidence through Earth's atmosphere, molecules and aerosols in the air scatter blue light in all directions (this is why the sky is blue). The remaining reddish light is bent (refracted) into Earth's umbral shadow zone, giving the eclipsed Moon a coppery glow.
Copyright-free image credit: Tony Phillips.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0512_030512_lunareclipse.html
Many of my students asked whay the moon turns a redish or an orange color during the eclipse. The web sit above gave this explanation.
"During a total solar eclipse, the new moon passes in front of the sun and momentarily casts day into the darkness of night. But during a total lunar eclipse, the moon remains at least partially lit during the event.
Even though Earth blocks the moon from direct sunlight during an eclipse, some sunlight is refracted, or bent, by the Earth's atmosphere and illuminates the moon. The atmosphere scatters most of short wavelengths of light&emdash;blue, green, and yellow&emdash;out of the refracted light so that primarily the orange and red rays reach the moon, said Espenak.
"The more dust the atmosphere has, the more scattering takes place and the redder, and darker, the moon appears," he said.
Since there have not been any major volcanic eruptions or extensive forest fires recently, astronomers believe the atmosphere is relatively clear of the type of particles that could cause a deep-red eclipse.
Byron Soulsby, an eclipse expert at the Theodore Lunar Observatory in Canberra, Australia, anticipates a bright orange or red during this event.
"Because the moon is near the edge of the inner shadow of the Earth, the umbra, the moon will probably be reasonably bright on its Northern edge&emdash;the upper edge in the northern hemisphere where the eclipse will be best seen&emdash;and grading to deeper red towards its center and lower edge," said Soulsby."
http://www.mreclipse.com/MrEclipse.html This site has great information about lunar and solar eclipses.
The site below will give you the 411 on lunar eclipses. http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/moon/eclipse.html&edu=elem
Table of recent and future lunar eclipses below. http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/moon/lunar_eclipse_stats.html&edu=elem
Total Eclipse of the Moon Thursday, May 15, 2003
A total eclipse of the full moon happens on Thursday evening, May 15th, when the sun, earth, and moon align. Anyone in North America will be able to see the eclipse, weather permitting. It happens during the early evening viewing time for California observers.
An eclipse of the moon happens when the moon moves through the shadow of the earth and grows dark for a few hours. This eclipse is total, and the moon will darken substantially. It will also turn reddish in color (the color comes from sunlight scattered around the edge of the earth and onto the moon).
Eclipses happen in stages as the moon moves through different parts of the earth's shadow. This eclipse is already in progress when the moon rises over California. As seen from Los Angeles,the moon rises in the southeast at 7:40 p.m. P.D.T. (which is also the time of sunset), and then the moon is half-way into the umbra, the dark inner part of the earth's shadow. When the moon has risen high enough to become visible a short time later, notice that the bottom half of the moon is dark. The moon moves deeper into the umbra as it rises higher until 8:13 p.m., when the moon is completely within the umbra and totality begins. At that moment the moon is only 5 degrees above the south-eastern horizon. The sky, however, is not yet dark. For the next 53
minutes the eclipse is total and the moon will appear very dark in a sky that is darkening too. The best time to watch is towards the end of totality at around 9 p.m.
Totality ends at 9:06 p.m. when the moon begins to move out of the umbra and its lower left edge begins to brighten. The moon then is still only 14 degrees high as seen from Los Angeles. The moon leaves the umbra at 10:17 p.m. and for practical purposes the eclipse ends, although part of the moon remains within the light outer part of the earth's shadow (the penumbra) until 11:14 p.m.
See a movie of a previous eclipse here:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/astronomy/
