Lunar Eclipse October 17 12:00 GMT

saskboy writes "Space Weather gives viewing instructions for tonight's partial lunar eclipse. 'According to folklore, October's full moon is called the "Hunter's Moon" or sometimes the "Blood Moon." It gets its name from hunters who tracked and killed their prey by autumn moonlight, stockpiling food for the winter ahead. The Hunter's Moon of 2005 is due on Oct. 17th.'"

Comments

More information about eclipses of the Moon

[saskboy]

"The full moon that occurs closest to the Autumnal Equinox (first day of fall) is known as a Harvest Moon. Due to the low angle of the ecliptic to the horizon, the moon rises only about 30 minutes later each night around a harvest moon as apposed to the normal 60 minutes later each night for the other full moons in the year."
Harvest Moon

It should also be noted that the only night a lunar eclipse can take place is on a full moon. Otherwise the earth cannot project a shadow onto the moon.

Re:More information about eclipses of the Moon

[Wornstrom]

actually, (in the northern hemisphere) the winter solstice is Dec. 22, first day of winter (shortest day of the year), and the summer solstice is Jun 21, the first day of summer (longest day of the year). link The equinoxes are the times of the year where the day and night are closest to equal. The Mayans built and aligned the pyramid at Chichen Itza based on the equinoxes to create a tribute to the god Quetzalcoatl, represented by a serpent. On the equinoxes, the sun casts shadows and triangles of light which are supposed to look like a diamondback rattlesnake. 'nother link

and a blue moon

[zappepcs]

is the second of two full moons occuring in a single month... so they do happen

Welcome to modern times.

[Seumas]

It's 2005. Why are we getting all giddy over a stupid eclipse? They're a fairly regular occurance. Why dont' we also get excited about a full moon? The only difference between the two is that one happens more or less every month and the other happens more or less every year.

This is the equivalant to a FOX news "news *ahem*" story.

Re:Welcome to modern times.

[saskboy]

"Why are we getting all giddy over a stupid eclipse? They're a fairly regular occurance. "

People get excited about things that happen only once a year all the time. *ahem birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas*

Astronomers like any old excuse to get out and look up at things that don't happen every day. The fact that we can predict these things when most people don't know the difference between a protractor and a compass, is, well, impressive. Don't spoil the astronomer's good time by saying it doesn't matter. Lots of things depend on the moon, and having more people focussing on the same good thing at the same time is bound to have positive effects.

Re:Welcome to modern times.

[jkauzlar]

It's 2005. Why are we getting all giddy over a stupid eclipse?

We can put a man on the moon; we can have a woman in the senate; we can talk to our mothers living two thousand miles away in Chicago while we shop for groceries in Los Angeles; We can manipulate DNA on scales of billionths of an inch; network television regularly offers believable portrayals of catastrophic disasters and explosions, not to mention news programs can take us to the other side of the world each and every night; Fermat's Last Theorem has been solved after being posed 400 years ago; physicsts can describe the first few seconds of the big bang; we have a robot on Mars regularly sending us pictures of the Martian landscape; we are living in a more or less completely-global economy; we finally have decent electric-hybrid cars; they can fit sixty gigibytes in a space not much bigger than your hand (the iPod); we have jets that travel faster than sound.

But people still get excited when the moon gets dark for a few seconds.

Re:Welcome to modern times.

[BobNET]

But people still get excited when the moon gets dark for a few seconds.

Consider the distances involved: a 12800km wide object is almost completely blocking the Sun from reaching a 3500km wide object that is 400000km away. The fact that this happens at all is the reason some of us are excited.

And although this is a partial eclipse, it's going to last more than "a few seconds". Probably closer to an hour...

Re:Now I finally ask my stupid,: answer

[saskboy]

A somewhat common misconception is that the moon is dark in places because the earth is shading it. This is NOT the case!

This can be seen with a flashlight and a few balls you have laying around. Put the flashlight in the middle, and shine it at the earth and moon balls. You'll see the side of the ball facing away from the sunlight will be dark. If the moon is to the left of the earth, at a 90 degree angle to the sun, then people on earth will only see half of the Moon.

An eclipse is the rare occurance of the moon being in [nearly] perfect alignment with the earth and the sun. Instead of the shadow being caused by a lack of sunlight being available, to shine on the surface, it's the earth that is passing in front of the moon.

There's also something called "earthshine" [slashdot.org had a story the last week on this]. It's sunlight from the earth that lights up the moon when it would otherwise be completely dark in a region that has no direct sunlight.

Never look directly at a lunar eclipse....

[fm6]

...or you turn into a werebat.

Hah! You were poised to flame me for confusing the solar eclipses with lunar eclipses, weren't you? Admit it!

Re:I need a question answered thats been bugging m

[Old Wolf]

The same side always faces the Earth, this is due to an effect of Earth's gravity on it. This implies that a "day" on the moon is 29 Earth days, ie. if you had a house there it would be sunny for 2 weeks and then dark for 2 weeks.

In the common expression "dark side of the moon, "dark" means "unknown", because we can never see it so we have no idea what is on it. It doesn't refer to whether the sun is shining on it.