The Canarian Tourist Board will be live streaming tonight’s lunar eclipse at http://www.thebestclimateintheworld.com/geminidas Just to remind you, the moon is at almost its closest approach to the Earth, so it’s will be a supermoon – noticeably bigger than usual.
There are two parts to the Earth’s shadow: the penumbra is the outer part, and the umbra is the much darker inner part.
- Penumbral Eclipse begins 28 Sep, 00:11:47 The penumbral part of Earth’s shadow starts moving over the Moon. This phase is not easily seen by the naked eye.
- Partial Eclipse begins 28 Sep, 01:07:13 The Earth’s umbra starts covering the Moon, making the eclipse more visible.
- Full Eclipse begins 28 Sep, 02:11:12 Earth’s umbra completely covers the Moon and the Moon is red, brown or yellow in color. This is the good bit!
- Maximum Eclipse 28 Sep, 02:47:09 This is the middle of the total eclipse.
- Full Eclipse ends 28 Sep, 03:23:05 At this stage, the Earth’s umbra starts moving away from the Moon’s surface.
- Partial Eclipse ends 28 Sep, 04:27:05 The Earth’s umbra completely leaves the Moon’s surface.
- Penumbral Eclipse ends 28 Sep, 05:22:31 At this point the eclipse ends and the Earth’s shadow completely moves away from the Moon.
I’ll be going up to the rim of the Caldera with a group from the Astrofest conference. Please don’t go up to the observatory itself, as your car headlights will ruin the scientific observations. Think twice about going elsewhere on the Caldera rim because parking is very limited elsewhere on the Caldera rim, and remember that you’ll have to drive down hundreds of hairpin roads in the dark. We’ll go up in a bus, which will leave us there and collect us in the morning. (I’m going to be very, very tired, obviously)
The next total lunr eclipse visible from the Canary Islands and UK will be 20th January 2019.
Hope it’s well worth getting tired for, Sheila.