Steve’s Virtual Planet

Lunar Eclipse, sort of

Yes, sort of. In other words, a penumbral lunar eclipse. This means the moon passed through the Earth’s shadow, hence the eclipse part. However, Earth’s shadow comes in two concentric circles - the inner, darker umbral and the outer, fainter penumbral. Follow the link above for lots of eclipse stuff.

Anyhow, on this past Friday, October 18th, the moon was only partially dimmed since it passed though the outer of the concentric shadows. Well, you might think, nice to know that NOW. Well, yes, I must admin, I wasn’t too fussed about it beforehand myself. Besides the forecast was crumby with a strong chance of lousy, so I wasn’t even hopeful I would even SEE the moon through the cloud cover. But guess what, this is one of those occasions where your stock of serendipity pays off. Sister La Luna came through! Literally!!!

Sure enough, at 7:50PM, right at the predicted peak of the eclipse, the clouds actually thinned out almost completely. I was indoors getting ready to start the planetarium show at FSC and I kept peeking outside. You know, kind of, “what if”. And there it was! The partial shadow effect! For real! In the lower right hand quadrant. It held for several minutes and it was quite a distinct but subtle darkening, even possibly a little bit of a reddening. And it stayed put. It wasn’t the clouds making the shadow. It was the Earth!

So, there. Another valuable lesson in skywatching - don’t write off an event beforehand. It may end up being a bust (like I thought this one would be), but you’ll be surprised sometimes that things happen they way they need to. So, be there with your eyes on and be prepared. For anything!

And of course, feel free to howl to your heart’s content!!