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

[h0ughy]

looking at an alert I just got I realised that there is not long for the totality of this eclipse, just a tad over 10 minutes. I really hope its crystal clear on the night


Local Lunar Eclipses
Saturday 4 April 2015
Time (24-hour clock) Object (Link) Event
21h15m26s
Lunar Eclipse
Partial lunar eclipse begins
Position Angle=133.7°, Position angle vertex=259.1°, Altitude=31.4°, Azimuth= 73.5° ENE
22h54m08s
Lunar Eclipse
Totality begins
Position Angle=190.4°, Position angle vertex=327.9°, Altitude=49.7°, Azimuth= 52.6° NE
23h00m15s
Lunar Eclipse →graphical chart
Greatest eclipse: Total Lunar Eclipse
Saros-Number: 132, Magnitude=1.006, Position angle=197.0°, Position angle vertex=335.8°
Brightness: -2.9mag, Danjon scale L=4.0 (very bright)
Duration total phase=12.3 minutes,
Duration partial phase=209.7 minutes,
Duration penumbral phase=361.1 minutes, ET-UT=67.8sec, Altitude=50.7°, Azimuth= 50.8° NE
23h06m24s
Lunar Eclipse
Totality ends
Position Angle=203.7°, Position angle vertex=343.8°, Altitude=51.7°, Azimuth= 49.0° NE


Sunday 5 April 2015
Time (24-hour clock) Object (Link) Event
0h45m07s
Lunar Eclipse
Partial lunar eclipse ends
Position Angle=260.4°, Position angle vertex=75.2°, Altitude=62.0°, Azimuth= 8.0° N
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[OzEclipse]

h0ughy,

What are you worrying about that for? It's still 4 weeks away. There's a total solar eclipse in 2 weeks to prepare for.

http://joe-cali.com/eclipses/PLANNING/TSE2015/index.html

Time to start packing.

Packing list : -
Telescope
Camera
lenses
Energizer lithium ultimate -40C rated batteries
-30 C Hepworth Freezer suit
Neos extreme overboots
Toothbrush
Antifreeze Toothpaste
Polar bear repellent spray
:)

Joe

[multiweb]

Yes, it's going to be a short one. Harder to do than last one. Not much room for error.

[Suzy]

:cloudy: Clouded over here in Brisbane and just had a lightning show. But I will remain crazily optimistic :screwy:.

[h0ughy]

fully clouded raining and windy here at Newcastle. i was hoping for at least a glimpse - even thought i could take a shot from the new shed as it faces E/N/E but no luck at all - will look in an hour to hope

[Wavytone]

Saw the partial phase - broken cloud here in NE victoria.

[Regulus]

Yep, and after days of beautiful weather we get clouds and ran. Grrrrr

[cspruit]

Its completely clear here in Melbourne. Except the light pollution :(

Looks beautiful through my 8" dob + 25mm. Full frame moon, partial white, mostly red. I gotta get a T-mount so I can get some photos.
It's now starting to come out of totality, looks like it has snow on top now.

Had a quick look at Jupiter at higher mag too, nice bands and moons, but no red spot at the moment.

[Rob_K]

Cloudy night here but the first partial eclipse was occasionally visible through cloud. Sky cleared considerably at totality although light cloud continued to drift through meaning views were intermittent and variable. The Moon maintained a bright rim throughout totality. A couple of shots attached...

Cheers -

[h0ughy]

many thanks for the views:thumbsup:

[Cynicide]

Just finished observing here in Victoria on my 10 inch dob. Great conditions. I took about 300mb of photos and video by holding an old Canon point and shoot up to the lens.

I put together a series of images here. (http://i.imgur.com/ejjRt2R.jpg)

[peterbat]

Great view from Thornbury! The clouds didn't roll in until 20 minutes after the end of totality.
Peter

[JohnG]

Clouds opened up long enough to get this shot. :)

Prime focus TSA-102, Canon 60Da, 3.2 seconds @ ISO 1000.

[h0ughy]

nice John, we didnt see a thing

[h0ughy]

:thumbsup: well captured

[Tamtarn]

Beautiful clear skies here. Awesome sight! :thumbsup:
Barb

[Suzy]

Wow! :scared2: Awesome collage and all taken hand held too.
Nice work Anthony.

[Will964]

Great viewing here - Cloudless and a little chilly...

[Astroman]

Got a few pics in (1002) only 41% useable though... managed to get together the collage I wanted, so it was a successful eclipse for me. Even maganged to stream it all over the world :o

[peterbat]

Great sequence Anthony, particularly hand-held!
You've inspired me to take some of the images I took and do something similar.
Peter

[Pinwheel]

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]

again sydney misses out on another eclipse time to move?

[OzStarGazer]

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]

The nasa eclipse page had it as totality for 4 min 43 secs http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2015Apr04T.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]

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/science/picture-galleries/8216136/The-total-lunar-eclipse-in-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]

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]

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]

my effort with Canon 600d, 250mm

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b319/floppywhopper/2aa031a0-b11a-4cfe-8e33-a4d79604d385.jpg

[AussieTrooper]

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

Should have stayed in Melbourne!