Is anyone gonna watch the lunar eclipse tonight?
I’m going in half an hour…
Lunar eclipse? Really? Mars was supposed to be seen August 27 the size of the moon…BUT it looked like a star and the moon was a new moon. What time is it there in Cyprus?
Yeah, it’s a partial lunar eclipse. I don’t believe that Mars can ever be seen from earth the size of the moon. Unless the planet orbits get rearanged somehow. Anyway, it’s almost finished now. I used the time to uni and hang out with my friends. It was really nice. It’s almost 20 to 11 now. How are things in Puerto Rico? I’ve always wanted to check out South and a bit of Central America…
Too bad my Learjet was in the shop or I would have gone.
I heard someone once went to Nova Scotia for the total eclipse of the sun.
Shine on Harvest Moon.
Ya somebody made that up and a bunch of people believed it.
Darn, I didn’t know about it and have missed it. The moon was full, huge and incredibly bright tonight, as expected, I suppose, if an eclipse is imminent. I only just realised this evening that an eclipse of the moon, unlike an eclipse of the sun, can be seen by anyone who can see the moon from where he is standing.
I never thought about that before.
Nao
You’re so vain, southern man.
I’ve always been a bit bothered by the way the same term “eclipse” is used to identify two different phenomena, something which shouldn’t happen in scientific terminology. The Moon is darkened during a lunar eclipse by the shadow of Earth as Earth passes between the Moon and the Sun. When this happens to the moons of other planets, these events are also called eclipses. Eclipses of Jupiter’s moons are common and easy to watch through a telescope. What we call a solar “eclipse” is more or less the opposite phenomenon, caused by the Moon passing in front of the Sun and obscuring it from view. This really should more properly be called an occultation, since that’s what we call it when the Moon passes in front of any other star, or planet, or when a planet or any other object does the same. Applying the term “eclipse” to a solar occultation seems like sloppy science, and only confuses people.
Astronomy was my major hobby for a few years, while I was living under a dark nighttime sky in Wisconsin. During that period I owned one unicycle and, if I count correctly, six telescopes. After moving to downtown Minneapolis, where the sky is washed out by lights, I’ve fallen away from it all, and it’s depressing to me to realize that I didn’t even know that an eclipse was happening, even though it wouldn’t have been visible to me anyway.
The Mars thing is outdated information. Snopes has a listing about it. A well-meaning cousin of mine sent me the Mars EMail a couple of weeks ago; I was a little puzzled for a moment, as even in my state of diminished awareness I was pretty sure that this was an off-year for Mars viewing.
I also like atronomy. I even wated to become an astronomer at some point. I still might, I don’t know. I wanted to get into starwatching, but there’s too much light pollution around here. I watched a solar occultation;) this year and now a lunar eclipse… Really nice.