Lunar Eclipse Feb 2008: Photos and International Viewing
Here on the Eastern coast of North America the total lunar eclipse began Wednesday evening at 8:43pm. The moon was totally eclipsed from 10:01pm to 10:51pm and then was partial again until 9 minutes after midnight. Not that I know any of that firsthand by looking at the sky over my head last night -- it was much too cloudy. In the past one would have just been out of luck and would have had to wait until the next one. But luckily for all of us who could not view this extraordinary event firsthand, there were live webcasts available. Anticipating the cloudy night I had planned to watch the webcast from the Canary Islands. Unfortunately, the observatory there was unable to broadcast due to the cloudy skies. I was able to watch the webcast from Barcelona until about 10:30pm when bad weather canceled their broadcast. I watched the remainder of the event via a broadcast from Argentina. The above image was pieced together from these various webcasts to give you a quick overview of the eclipse.
There are some spectacular photographs you can view at this Flickr pool. There is a great gallery of images from Barcelona (click the "next" button below the image) that covers the eclipse up to 10:30pm and a gallery of images from Argentina. There are many videos available on YouTube, my favorite is this one which shows the view from North Carolina, is set to music and also includes a few long shots that, I think, show Saturn and Regulus.
As the moonlight dims Saturn and Regulus will pop out and sandwich the moon. Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation Leo. Jack Horkheimer, host of the PBS show "Star Gazer," called the event "the moon, the lord of the rings and heart of the lion eclipse."
I do hope you all successfully maneuvered through this eclipse and didn't make any important decisions as we tend to be more emotional and less logical in our thinking during eclipse periods. While we do have to wait until December 21, 2010 for the next total lunar eclipse, we can look forward to August of this year, when there will be a total solar eclipse and a partial lunar eclipse.
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For more go to site: Lunar Eclipses for Beginners. Two excellent books on this subject: Eclipses 2005-2017: A Handbook of Solar And Lunar Eclipses And Other Rare Astronomical Events 