On December 10, the Last Lunar Eclipse Until 2014

New submitter althanas has this entry, snipped from NASA's Science News, for next weekend's social calendar (if you're lucky enough to live in the viewing range): "The action begins around 4:45 am Pacific Standard Time [on December 10th] when the red shadow of Earth first falls across the lunar disk. By 6:05 am Pacific Time, the Moon will be fully engulfed in red light. This event — the last total lunar eclipse until 2014 — is visible from the Pacific side of North America, across the entire Pacific Ocean to Asia and Eastern Europe. For people in the western United States the eclipse is deepest just before local dawn. Not only will the Moon be beautifully red, it will also be inflated by the Moon illusion."

Comments

Re:What a slut!

[masternerdguy]

Posts like these are the limit of the troll function as creativity approaches 0.

Yay!

[Squiddie]

So glad it falls on a Saturday. Will stay up for this.

Re:Yay!

[masternerdguy]

Unfortunately I can't. I have a final to take on Saturday. I'm in a crappy visibility zone anyway.

Re:Yay!

[hedwards]

Yeah, the timing on this could hardly be better. I'm getting a new camera on Monday and it should allow me to get a really close look at things. I know I'll hate myself for getting up that early, but something like this is way too good to pass up.

Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Hadlock]

PST/CST/EST is great and all, but it's much easier for international users to just convert from GMT/UTC to their local time zone. Heck, I'm in CST and it's faster for me to simply know that CST is UTC -6:00 than it is to remember if PST is two or three hours ahead or behind me. Additionally it gets rid of the ambiguity of wether or not PST is currently on DST or not (let's not get in to that argument today...).

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Kangburra]

To be fair TFA states Pacific Time, so it is NASA you need to be complaining to.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring the comment below, it's in PST/CST/EST because it's an American website. They're not going to convert it to GMT (regardless of how easy it is) just to have Americans convert it back.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, I'm in CST and it's faster for me to simply know that CST is UTC -6:00 than it is to remember if PST is two or three hours ahead or behind me.

really? pacific is always 2 hours behind central. that's not hard to remember if you're over 5 years old.

Additionally it gets rid of the ambiguity of wether or not PST is currently on DST or not

PST and PDT aren't the same thing. there is no ambiguity.

PST = UTC-0800
PDT = UTC-0700

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think the S stands for?

PST. PDT.

If you can't remember that there are four timezones in the US, and that the sun goes from east to west, perhaps you should ... well, I don't really know what to suggest.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

PST = Pacific Standard Time (no DST, UTC -8:00).
PDT = Pacific Daylight Time (DST in effect, UTC -7:00).

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[houghi]

TFA might do that but TFS is supposed to be written by editors.
Editing these things should be one of their tasks, but that is work and they rather copy and paste and be done with it.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[socialleech]

PST is different than PDT...

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, UTC always stays the same...

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

.. except when leap seconds are added or removed.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[tverbeek]

If you live in the US and can't remember the order of the four time zones that cover the contiguous 48, you're not trying. Heck, it sounds like you're trying not to.

I'd almost be willing to cut you some slack if you lived in Pacific or Eastern and weren't sure about the time zones in between, because being ignorant about the middle of the country is a cherished part of east-/west-coast culture. But someone in Mountain or Central time should have figured it out in elementary school, or within a year of moving there.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[xaxa]

Writing -0700 (or whatever) would be better than some acronym that's more-or-less meaningless to anyone outside North America. I think New York is usually 5 hours behind here, but has different DST begin/end times, and I can never remember if "PST" is another two, three or four hours further west.

This page uses UTC: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2011.html#LE2011Dec10T

Penumbral Eclipse Begins: 11:33:32 UT
Partial Eclipse Begins: 12:45:42 UT
Total Eclipse Begins: 14:06:16 UT
Greatest Eclipse: 14:31:49 UT
Total Eclipse Ends: 14:57:24 UT
Partial Eclipse Ends: 16:17:58 UT
Penumbral Eclipse Ends: 17:30:00 UT

Sunset here will be at 15:52... if it's not cloudy, it's probably worth having a look.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[sjwt]

At lest the PFD linked in the article has UT as well as a visibly map,

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OHfigures/OH2011-Fig06.pdf

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Ruie]

TFA might do that but TFS is supposed to be written by editors. Editing these things should be one of their tasks, but that is work and they rather copy and paste and be done with it.

I am not familiar with TFA and TFS - how many hours from UTC is that ?

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

More than half the area it's visible in is in PST. Why NOT use PST to let people know?

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA is +0, TFS is +48.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Removed? The earth's rotation slowing, not speeding up. You're a fucking idiot.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Hognoxious]

I've never understood the logic of having one called "central" when there's an even number of them.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[berberine]

If you click on the map, it takes you here, which has all the different time zones listed. It also has a bunch of neat animations to look at.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[LingNoi]

TFS is never written by editors. The stories are submitted by users and the editors, (!) edit them.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow youre right remembering two terms in place of one is soooooo much easier. I cant wait to hear your arguement for the imperial measurement system. You fucking wankers are hilarious.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that visibility maps seems to make a liar or idiot out of the submitter as he says it is visible across the US west and over to Asia. But it isn't really according to the map. In fact, Northern California only gets to see U4 - the penumbral portion. Farther west (pacific ocean, Asia) gets to see even less (basically none of it).

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymus]

That's completely false. When has a Slashdot editor ever edited anything?

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[LingNoi]

Whenever I've submitted stories they've always been edited.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[DerekLyons]

Heck, I'm in CST and it's faster for me to simply know that CST is UTC -6:00 than it is to remember if PST is two or three hours ahead or behind me.

That's your handicap, not a universal condition - there is a difference. (I'm in PST, and know the offsets for all (CONUS) timezones by heart.)

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Aqualung812]

Good for you, you know your CONUS time zones. Do you expect someone in India to remember all of the CONUS TZs, or would you like the New Zeland time for the eclipse?
The point is that UTC is global, just like this website.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Anonymous Coward]

By definition, PST is not on DST - otherwise it would PDT.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[DerekLyons]

Good for you, you know your CONUS time zones. Do you expect someone in India to remember all of the CONUS TZs, or would you like the New Zeland time for the eclipse?

When India or New Zealand starts paying NASA's bills (since they authored the article), then you'll have a point. Until then, piss off.
 

The point is that UTC is global, just like this website.

Someone with the reading comprehension of a eight year old would note that article quoted is by a US government agency for US residents. Hence, the time is quoted in the relevant zones. So, until you graduate elementary school, piss off.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[stoborrobots]

CmdrTaco doesn't want to edit stuff!

If you want a "very straight-laced, spell-checked, fact-checked summary" go to CNN, says he....

Oh, no, I'm quoting my own sig! :-S

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[stoborrobots]

Or, if you want it in local time, http://whenistheeclipse.com/ (admittedly just presenting the same data with TZ conversion). If I get bored tonight, I'll add a drop-list with some cities so you don't have to type in your time zone...

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[xaxa]

That's useful, thanks.

There's a Javascript method to retrieve the timezone of the user's PC: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_gettimezoneoffset.asp

I've never tried it, but it might be easy to add the HTML5 geolocation thing as a default: http://html5demos.com/geo .

I'm not sure if there's an easy way to get the timezone for a lat+long though. Some ideas here. I've heard of geonames.org (related to my job), but never used it.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[xaxa]

Someone with the reading comprehension of a eight year old would note that article quoted is by a US government agency for US residents. Hence, the time is quoted in the relevant zones. So, until you graduate elementary school, piss off.

So what?

There was another eclipse earlier this year. This article is from the BBC, which is funded by British people. The time given was GMT, even though the UK was using BST (GMT+0100) during the summer. The equivalence is given: In the UK, observers were able to view the eclipse from 2100 BST (2000 GMT). It's usual for articles containing time-sensitive events in another country to give the timezone, at least for the first mention, e.g. "The explosion occurred at 1234 local time (1034 GMT, 1134 BST)." UK-centric articles expected to be of wider interest often give the timezone too: "The result will be announced at 1234 GMT" (winter) or "...at 1234 BST (1134 GMT)" (summer).

"The action begins around 0345 AKST (1245 UTC)" is all that was required (noting that Alaska is the only bit of USA that gets to see the full eclipse).

Lose the xenophobia, please.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[mcgrew]

You're not going to see the eclipse in India, so what difference does it make what they use? Most people who will be able to see it are in that time zone. Putting local events in UDT is just stupid. If it were ioonly visible in India, it would be best to use Indian time.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[mcgrew]

They are in fact sometimes written by editors. I've submitted stories that were posted, with me as submitter, with TFS completely different than what I'd written. And most of the time, the ones posed were better than the original I submitted.

Re:Can we start using GMT/UTC in posts please?

[Aqualung812]

The point is:

1. This is a global site, refering to an event that can be viewed (directly or indirectly through streaming) globally.

2. If an event is relevant for more than 1 timezone, UTC IS THE STANDARD. Every one of our computers uses UTC offset, this shouldn't even be a debate.

Sure, if your local paper lists a time, list local time. When you're talking about what time a flight departs, the departing airport time makes sense. Posting things on a website that is global suggests you should put it into a timezone that the globe uses to mark time, not 1/24th of it.

Some info for the astonoy geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use this nasa javascript calculator to see when you will be able to see the eclipse (or any other one). The interface is clunky and 1997ish but hey.. that's your government at work!

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/JLEX/JLEX-NA.html

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[hldn]

beh, partial eclipse starts visible, but goes quickly goes past the horizon here :(

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Your government -- specifically NASA/Goddard -- doing as much as they can on a limited budget, with very little funding for nice toys like this.

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Write letters and lobby your representatives to fund a project to move the horizon. There's still some time, plus we need the jobs.

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[DangerOnTheRanger]

What's an astonoy geek?

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The interface is clunky and 1997ish but hey.. that's your government at work!

By "clunky and 1997ish," you apparently mean "loads quickly, works the same on any browser, and gives you useful information without a bunch of extraneous crap." Man, I miss 1997.

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[thegarbz]

The interface is clunky and 1997ish but hey.. that's your government at work!

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/JLEX/JLEX-NA.html

As opposed to posting a URL that can't be clicked on? That's more like 1987ish.

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[dotancohen]

The interface is clunky and 1997ish but hey.. that's your government at work!

By "clunky and 1997ish," you apparently mean "loads quickly, works the same on any browser, and gives you useful information without a bunch of extraneous crap." Man, I miss 1997.

You equate "works the same on any browser" with 1997? Wow, were you browsing only designed-for-Netscapse sites or only designed-for-IE sites at the time?

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Fair enough; 1997 was probably the height of the browser wars, and there was a lot of "this site best viewed in ..." crap floating around. But I do remember a lot of "fill out the form, get the data" sites, like the one OP referenced, that looked just fine in both Netscape and IE -- and which loaded faster over a 28.8 modem than many of their "modern" counterparts do over DSL.

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[dotancohen]

Fair enough; 1997 was probably the height of the browser wars, and there was a lot of "this site best viewed in ..." crap floating around. But I do remember a lot of "fill out the form, get the data" sites, like the one OP referenced, that looked just fine in both Netscape and IE -- and which loaded faster over a 28.8 modem than many of their "modern" counterparts do over DSL.

I do agree about the loading and rendering. I cannot believe that modern sites take so long to load and render.

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[mcgrew]

Fair enough; 1997 was probably the height of the browser wars, and there was a lot of "this site best viewed in ..." crap floating around.

That's true, but it's only because folks were (stupidly imo) biting off more than they could chew. My sites were pretty much W3C compliant, and I often put (as a parody of the stupid sites) "best viewed in any browser." It even worked in Mosaic. And I had mouseovers, javascript (which degraded gracefully if your browser didn't support it), music, animations... pretty much everything that you would consider "web 2.0" today.

The secret? Nobody comes to your site because it's pretty, they come because there's useful or entertaining information. The looks simply matched the content.

Today's problem more than then is folks writing web sites using some automated tool rather than bothering to learn HTML.

Re:Some info for the astonoy geeks

[mcgrew]

As opposed to posting a URL that can't be clicked on? That's more like 1987ish.

I never saw any unclickable links on Compuserve or the bulletin boards, and damned few on the internet in 1997. OTOH I'm constantly annoyed at sites that use javascript fo rtheir links for no reason whatever, making it so you can't open the link in a new tab, or worse, Flash which forces a new window to open. And I see more and more of it.

If you use javascript for links, you're a moron. Period.

w000h00

[Anonymous Coward]

finally being in seattle , wa might get me something, i am so watching this, taking blankets out on the lawn and kicking back and view the whole thing, cant wait.. w00h000000

Has anyone else noticed this?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really weird, but all of the last several lunar eclipses have occurred exactly at a Full Moon!

Non only is this very spooky, but it also proves astrology!

Re:Has anyone else noticed this?

[Anonymous Coward]

All total lunar eclipses occur during a full moon since the earth, moon, and sun are all in a straight line during the eclipse.

Re:Has anyone else noticed this?

[Alsee]

Even freakier, they're all at night.
Clearly a satanic influence at work.

-

How is this news?

[flohuels]

Tho interesting, this is like telling your alien friends on the mars that you are celebrating christmas in 21 days from now... (instead of telling them you do every year on December 25; for those who didn't get it)

Technically...

[actionbastard]

There is a lunar eclipse every 29.53059 days (29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.8 seconds). It's just not always visible from the Earth's surface. The complete calendar for the next decade is here:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEdecade/LEdecade2011.html
so you may plan ahead.

Re:Technically...

[sackbut]

Did you look at the calendar you quoted? Let's see for next year: (2012 Jun 04 11:04:20 Partial 140 0.370 02h07m Asia, Aus., Pacific, Americas 2012 Nov 28 14:34:07 Penumbral 145 -0.187 - Europe, e Africa, Asia, Aus.). Every 29 days... hmmm... nope. The moon circles the Earth that often but due to the (about 5 degree) tilt of the orbits it does not fall in the shadow that often. Also, if the moon is eclipsed, it is visible from an entire hemisphere. You may be thinking of a solar eclipse for visibility.

Re:Technically...

[voidphoenix]

No, the Moon doesn't always pass through the Earth's shadow on every orbit. It's (the Moon's) orbital plane is tilted with respect to the Earth's.

Re:Technically...

[Hognoxious]

Actually it's your orbit that's tilted, earthling.

next time in 2014

[Cyko_01]

so what you are saying is that if I miss it then I can catch it next time in 3 years and its no big deal?

Re:next time in 2014

[youn]

Assuming the mayans are not very accurate in their doomsday scenario and 2012 is not the end of the world :p

Re:next time in 2014

[mcgrew]

I assure you tha tthe world as I know it will end -- I'm eligibe to retire next December!

HTML5?

[xaxa]

Incidentally, HTML5 might (I'm not sure, the spec looks complicated and there's debate and what's happening) solve this, by allowing a date and time provided with a timezone to be converted into local time.

woosh!

[KingAlanI]

woosh!

Everything you're not supposed to do in JavaScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh. God.

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/JLEX/program.js

My favorite part is

                eval(timeperiod+"()");

Astonoy geek

[The Creator]

That's one that is annoying on an astronomical scale.

I hope this isn't a sign...

[laosland]

My last final is that morning.

That's fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar Eclipse is usually better anyway.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is all about an amazing astrological even and the only thing you can do is make cry baby faces over the PST timezone not being converted for you?
Wow... Do you know how pansy and entitled that makes you look? Someone mentioned "Americans wouldn't do it no matter how easy it was". Well if its so easy just do it yourself and grow up for God's sake.

On the other hand... its nice to know our lives are so easy these days that we have to hunt for things to complain about.

Just an American perspective... please excuse me your Majesty. (Rolls Eyes... )

DOOM will be legal age!

[antdude]

DOOM 1 shareware came out on 12/10/1993. ;)

We miss out again

[pgpalmer]

I'm waiting for a total lunar eclipse to happen where it's visible from Australia, preferably when it's also not winter.

Viewable online?

[halcyon1234]

Will Google and Sloosh be doing a livestream of the event, like last time?