total lunar eclipse 4th april 2015 - not long for totality

[Pinwheel (Doug)]

Here in the Wimmera it was a fantastic clear windless night. We had a small eclipses party with eight visitors watching though my 12" Newt. Great fun for all including a young 11 year old boy experiencing his first lunar eclipse, he has a new goto telescope but still needs to learn how to fly it.

I also got a phone call from a lady in town scared that something has happened to the moon. She had no idea what was happening, so I explained what was taking place & reassured her all was well. She called again this morning to thank me for the reassurance.

No photos taken but a most excellent night.

[icytailmark (Mark)]

again sydney misses out on another eclipse time to move?

[OzStarGazer]

Originally Posted by icytailmark

again sydney misses out on another eclipse time to move?

Yeah, I was thinking of moving to Queensland too (I mentioned this before), but they were not very lucky either. Who would have thought that Melbournians would be the lucky ones with perfectly clear skies?

Online was nice though (warm and comfortable of course, and with commentaries, music and other stuff), but most people in remote parts of Australia won't have an Internet connection that is good enough. 5 hours of streaming is also probably about 10 GB. What is really spooky is that every single time the bad weather was more or less only during the eclipse...

This is a screenshot of the rain in my location for this month. The day of the eclipse was the worst day of the month, and the other two eclipses were the same. But I promised to myself not to let this irritate me...

[ChrisM]

Interesting to note that a few people saw a lit rim all the way through 'totality'. Through scattered thin cloud, I never saw the Moon go dark all over, so am interested to hear, in light of the varying totality duration forecasts, whether or not the Moon was fully eclipsed by the Earth's shadow.

[doppler (Rick)]

Originally Posted by ChrisM

Interesting to note that a few people saw a lit rim all the way through 'totality'. Through scattered thin cloud, I never saw the Moon go dark all over', so am interested to hear, in light of the varying totality duration forecasts, whether or not the Moon was fully eclipsed by the Earth's shadow.

The nasa eclipse page had it as totality for 4 min 43 secs http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/...2015Apr04T.pdf

It was a close graze for sure, very subtle transition. Here is one of my least exposed pics from around mid totality? I think that overall it was red enough to look like a total eclipse.

Rick

[Paul Haese]

From Clayton Bay in SA, the moon appeared a deep orange to the eye and there was a sliver of light around the lower half of the moon which was where the grazing event was occurring. The last two eclipses have been two of the darkest ones I have ever witnessed in the last 41 years. I have put up a couple of shots in the Solar system images forum if anyone is interested.

[OzStarGazer]

Starry Night Pro listed the event as "partial lunar eclipse", and the reporter/commentator of the online streaming also said that some people considered it a partial eclipse... Maybe they were right? The online streaming never really showed totality either. However, the dark part was dark alright, not orange or like many images posted here. The images below are unedited simple screenshots.
PS: They changed the exposure in the middle of totality, as you can see, because they were not happy with the first images. But it never looked like the images from Victoria, although the images in the middle are similar to those from NZ I think.

[doppler (Rick)]

I wonder if the view was different further east where the moon was overhead? Fiji is the closest to that area but I have not been able to google any images from there. Looking at worlwide pics it does seem like it was a bit darker in the US. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scie...-pictures.html

Rick

[ChrisM]

I also wondered whether for such a fine graze, the degree of eclipse may have appeared differently for widely spaced observing locations. However, I doubt whether changing your position here by a few thousand km would have much affect on the view of a sphere about 400,000 km away. But I could be wrong....

This also begs the question of just how sharp the transition from penumbra to umbra really is at ~400,000 km.

Chris

[ChrisM]

Originally Posted by doppler

I wonder if the view was different further east where the moon was overhead? Fiji is the closest to that area but I have not been able to google any images from there. Looking at worlwide pics it does seem like it was a bit darker in the US. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scie...-pictures.html

Rick

I agree Rick that the linked image seems to have less of a bright rim, but the pic could have been 'processed' a bit too.

Chris

[doppler (Rick)]

Originally Posted by ChrisM

I also wondered whether for such a fine graze, the degree of eclipse may have appeared differently for widely spaced observing locations.
Chris

I guess any difference would be between far north and far south, so we would need a pic from Alaska or the eastern coast of the USSR to compare with.

Rick

[Will964]

I observed a lit ring thoughout totality like the majority here in Victoria. The problem with comparing images from other locations is a very large proportion of them appear to have had some form of 'manipulation' - to put it politely.

[floppy (Neville)]

my effort with Canon 600d, 250mm

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...d79604d385.jpg

[AussieTrooper (Ben)]

Up in Mansfield (NE Victoria) nothing but clouds the whole time.

Should have stayed in Melbourne!