nov total eclipse

[woodstock1703 (George)]

Hey everyone Im new to astronomy and keen to learn also,I Live in Qld and filmed the eclipse...now what was it that blocked out the sun because where i saw and filmed whatever blocked out the sun travelled in a west to east trajectory.... but the moon travels from east to west.I will put my video of what i filmed on soon.

[Shark Bait (Stu)]

Welcome to astronomy George,

If you download a program called Stellarium it will allow you to see how the Moon, Planets, Stars and other deep sky objects move in relation to the Earth. It is planetarium software and it is free.

Might be worth editing your post before the locals see it.

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Hi George
Firstly, before anyone else does, this is quite definitely NOT an "Astrology" forum. This is an amateur astronomy forum. The "other A word" is a load of superstitious hokum.
That being said, welcome to IIS!!!
It was definitely the Moon that blocked the sun, there is nothing else large enough in the sky to do the job. What you have to remember is both the the sun and moon are moving in the sky, but they move at different rates. The suns apparent motion, for all intents and purposes is caused by the Earths rotation and it completes approximately 1 full rotation each 24 hours. The moons motion is partly the earths rotation and partly its own orbit. As both the earths rotation and the moons orbit, are in the same direction, it actually travels through the sky in an east-west direction due to the Earths rotation, but in a west to east direction due to its orbit. As a result its apparent motion through the sky is slower than the Suns. Thus it travels, relative to the sun in a west to east direction.
Voila!

Very good question though!!

Malcolm

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Hi George,
Again, Malcolm has come up with the goods.
On our tracking mounts we have to set what speed according to which object we are viewing. eg. Celestial (for the stars) Lunar (for the Moon) and Solar (for the Sun)
Once you wrap your head around that, plus the fact that the Earth is tilted on a 23 degree angle, you can see that objects can seem to be moving a bit skew iffy up there.

[Shark Bait (Stu)]

These screen grabs are from another planetarium program called Starry Night. It is not free like Stellarium but it is the one that I prefer to use.


In these screen grabs:

• the first image in from the 7th Nov, the second is from the 8th and so on until the last which is from the 14th Nov
• the time is set for 0600 hrs EST for all images
• The daylight has been turned off to improve contrast
• The Constellation stick figures have been left on to give a point of reference
• The planet that is moving through Virgo is Venus

Hope this helps you to get your head around the celestial clockwork.