Timely Total Lunar Eclipse
Total Lunar Eclipse--Photo Richard Elliott
Should the Saturday morning desert skies be clear, December 10, early risers will experience the last eclipse for 2011. Also, this timely total lunar eclipse is a special time to perform an experiment illustrating what is called the “moon illusion.”
The rising or setting full moon appears on the horizon monstrously large, to the mind’s perception. Yet, while positioned higher in the sky, the moon seems much smaller. This is an illusion! Now is your chance to test the “moon illusion.”
The night before the morning’s total lunar eclipse, take a dime outside. Hold the edges of the coin pinched between the thumb and forefinger, at arms length, and while the moon is high in the sky eclipse it with the dime. The dime will just barely cover the full moon. The morning of the total eclipse, cover the moon with the coin, before it sets on the western horizon. If the moon is larger on the horizon, it will not be covered by the dime. Go ahead. Debunk the moon illusion.
For those in the western United States, the eclipse will begin around 4:55 AM, PST. At 6:05, the moon should glow orange-red. This is a good time to perform the moon illusion experiment. The moon will set on the western horizon at 7:00 AM, fully eclipsed. Sunrise is 7:02. Since the moon sets completely eclipsed, western observers will not be able to see the eclipse to its finish. However, the eclipse times provide another timely opportunity to more easily photograph the eclipse.
Place the camera on a tripod, to steady the camera during shooting. Photos will be more dramatic using a telephoto lens. The camera settings will be more adjusted to low-light, daytime photography, rather than the dark of night, usually requiring time-lapse exposures to capture nighttime eclipses, as seen in the above photo. Shoot many varied exposures to capture this timely eclipse and its orange-reddish hues.
“I expect this eclipse to be bright orange, or even copper-colored, with a possible hint of turquoise,” said Richard Keen, Atmospheric Scientist at the University of Colorado, to NASA Science–Science News, December 2, 2011.
According to the NASA story, “Keen has been studying lunar eclipses as a means of monitoring conditions in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.” He has a fairly successful rate of predictions for the color of lunar eclipses.
For those prefering to sleep in and possibly catch the next total lunar eclipse, they will be waiting until the evening of April 14-15, 2014, according to earthsky.org (http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/when-is-the-next-total-lunar-eclipse-for-north-america). Best to catch this year’s timely eclipse.
Sources: http://www.astronomy.org“Star Watch for the Greater LeHigh Valley and http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-naasa/2011/02dec-lunareclispe, “Science at NASA.”
Hi Richard, were you able to view this?
I got up too late by five minutes. A friend in Bay Area said it was really interesting.