Note to self

Next time you find a wonderful Mother’s Day card, make sure you read it properly. Today isn’t her birthday.

Yep, I picked up a birthday card by mistake. Didn’t even realise when I wrote it out, only when she read it…

Eclipse photos

So, I took eclipse photos on Saturday night, I filled a 1gig SD card – though at 6 meg per photo in RAW format , that’s quite easy to do.

I was hoping to get enough decent images to animate them, showing the progression of the eclipse. Far too many were out of focus to be useful, I should have planned a bit better and worked out the correct exposure settings before hand. Oh well, next time…

Lunar Eclipse 2007
click for bigger
Eclipse Progression

Moon enters umbra
click for bigger
The moon shortly after entering the umbra

Total Lunar Eclipse

From 8pm onwards tonight look up to the sky, and weather permitting you will see the first total Lunar eclipse visible from the UK since 2004 (but you’d not have seen that one, because it was cloudy).

Key times for the eclipse

    * Moon enters penumbra: 2018
    * Moon enters umbra: 2130
    * Totality begins: 2244
    * Mid-eclipse: 2321
    * Totality ends: 2358
    * Moon leave umbra: 0111
    * Moon leaves penumbra: 0224

The science bit
A lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth and Moon are lined up almost perfectly in space, with the Earth between the Sun and the Moon.

The Earth casts a cone-shaped shadow in space, and as the Moon passes though this shadow, the only light reaching it has passed though the Earth’s atmosphere. The quantity of dust and particulate pollution in the atmosphere affects the colour of the light that illuminates the Moon. Lots of dust leads to a deep red Moon, less dust produces a more orange colour.

I hope to get some photos of the event to post here