Eclipses Archives

July 22, 2009December 24, 2015 by Tammy Plotner

July 22, 2009 Total Solar Eclipse from China – Let’s Chase!

Eclipse from Chongqing Municipality (Xinhua/Liu Chan)

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The total solar eclipse which just occurred on the 22nd of July 2009 was the longest maximum duration of the 21st century. Not since Saros 1991 have astronomers and eclipse chasers been treat to such an event! Totality lasted over six and a half minutes at maximum. duration. The event started in India along the western shore near Surat moved towards Butan and reached the southern tip of Nepal and the northern edge of Bangladesh.

For other lucky astronomers like Vietnamese student Dang Anh Tuan at Hanoi National University of Education, the eclipse path also took the event over cities like Chengdu, Suining, Chonging, Wuhan, Xiaogan, Hangzhou, and Shanghai – and event which yielded five minutes of totality. Leaving Shanghai the shadow path raced across the ocean, to fall across islands such as Toshima and Akusaki south of Japan and eventually the Marshall islands. Where was the longest point? The maximum eclipse duration of 6 minutes and 43 seconds occurs far off the coast in the Pacific Ocean! Are you ready to become an eclipse chaser? Then follow me…

I’ve always wanted to go on an eclipse chasing journey, but I’m afraid I’ll never quite be rich or well enough, unless it happens somewhere near me. But, my world is one that is both large and very small at the same time… And filled with wonderful friends from every corner. Bill Fish of Lubrizol Advanced Materials made my day by sending me some photos shared by their employees immediately after the eclipse had ended.

Seeing such incredible beauty, like this image of Bailey’s Beads taken in Chong Qing, and in just a few hours meeting great people like Jessica Bian, Kelly Zhou, Jun-Sheng Cao, Leo Chi, Mars Meng, Lucy Wang and Helen Tong felt so wonderful. Truly astronomy is a language we all speak! By roughly 9:00 in the morning, this is what they would have seen from their office windows or rooftops. Can you imagine what an exciting day it must have been?!

Well, needless to say, once I saw something like that, all my worries and cares for the day seemed so small. Even though I couldn’t leave my desk, the marvelous opportunity for me to become an eclipse chaser had just opened up like a fortune cookie right before my eyes. It was time for me to learn Chinese… and check out this awesome video done by Hubei Jingmen!

But he wasn’t alone… And neither was I. Millions of folks all over China were witnessing the eclipse and with each video I felt more and more like I was there, too.

“In the Zhejiang Haining, huge amounts of people were out to observe the wonderful total solar eclipse. The observation person is sea of people. But two big marvelous sight’s secret directions are the Sun, the Earth and the Moon…. “three meet”.”

Now, let’s travel to Beijing where the sky was enveloped in mist. Despite the weather, some 200 astronomy watchers queued in front of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory at 6:30 a.m. Staff at the observatory said the eclipse had sparked interest in astronomy. Yang Jing, a high-school student from Urumqi said. “I didn’t expect such a big crowd to watch the eclipse!”

Our next video comes from Chengdu… You can imagine the city stopping for just a moment to look skyward. “As soon as the totality happened, the clouds closed in so we couldn’t see the corona. That’s a pity,” said Zhen Jun, a man whose work unit had given the day off for the spectacle.

Now we move on to Hangzhou… When thousands of people thronged outdoors for the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, animals at the zoo in east China’s Hangzhou City also reacted, quickly and confusedly. The shadow of the moon disoriented birds whose body clock and direction depend on the sun. Red-crowned cranes and flamingos that had been wandering or drinking water suddenly fell asleep during the brief blackout of eclipse. But when the sun rays came out again several minutes later, the birds emerged from their cages and started the life of another “day.”

Even though I don’t understand a word of Chinese, I understand every word of “human”. Listen to them… Listen to the people talk and the children! How I wish I were there, too! Said Kang Hui:“The celestial phenomenon was a marvelous sight”. Are you ready to move again and follow the shadow? Then, let’s take a trip to Shanxi Linfen…

Now, I’ll race you to Hong Kong! Hundreds of people thronged into the Hong Kong Space Museum Wednesday morning for the Partial Solar Eclipse Observation activity. The public watched the eclipse using telescopes equipped with a safe filtering system and projection under guidance provided by the Space Museum.

Gosh, some of that footage feels like you could just reach right out and wrap your hand around that Moon, doesn’t it? Now let’s head to the middle of Anhui Yi County…

This one where you can see the corona dazzling is simply extraordinary. Can you imagine what it would feel like to be able to see this in real life? Come on… Let’s continue our eclipse chasing trip to Shanghai! It was raining in Shanghai when the total eclipse occurred at 9:35 a.m. The city put extra police on streets, and more than 30 police vessels patrolled the coast. Only street lamps were left on, as the city turned off all landscape lighting to allow people to watch the solar eclipse.

In Shanghai, more than 4,000 people ended up in suburban Yuehu Park of Sheshan Observatory and Yangshan Deep Water Port, two prime spots in the city, to observe the eclipse. Shanghai Science Hall also organized a public viewing session in downtown Fuxing Park and seventeen observation stations were set up in the solar eclipse path from Yunnan province to Zhejiang province.

Now we travel to the Henan Luoyang and say hello to these great kids and their equally excited parents and grandparents as we catch a partial eclipse.

“Luoyang’s light rain was intermittent, in the morning about 10:45, the Sun opened out the cloud layer to reveal the face of what was to come. The residents might see the partial solar eclipse! This kind of picture has not been seen here for a very long time. The Henan Luoyang partial solar eclipse looks just like the raging fire phoenix raising slowly.”

Shall we continue to Taiwan? Then grab us a cup of coffee and I will meet you at the Taibei Municipal Astronomy Scientific Culture Hall.

Shall we travel to Shenyang? This was also a partial solar eclipse location, but witnesses said the Moon “seemed like it was curved”.

Now, come with us to Ningbo. This one is so beautiful I wept when I saw it…

“This morning we just watched the total solar eclipse, which happens every 500 years. When the whole sun is blacken by the Moon. Everyone is highly excited. It’s pity I forgot to bring the camera by my side and the moment is passed away soon. But I am still lucky to see the sight. 500 years……how significant!”

When I was a child, I was charmed by a story about Ping the Duck, who lived on the Yangtze River. The last of the hundreds of videos I have watched today that I’d like to share with you is part of the Yangtze River collection.

Enjoy this beautiful composite image taken by Yang Lei at a park in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality. It has been my most wonderful pleasure over the day to spend time in the East…

Chasing the Sun!

Solar eclipse occurring over Taipei of southeast China's Taiwan

My many thanks to Bill Fish for getting me started, Jessica Bian for investigating and translating and the wonderful people at Sina for sharing!

June 10, 2009December 24, 2015 by Anne Minard

Lunar, Solar Eclipses Hold Secrets to Other Worlds

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Want to know about the atmospheres of planets around other stars, and the stars themselves?

Start at home.

A pair of papers in this week’s issue of Nature is advocating continued studies of both lunar eclipses, when the Moon transits Earth’s shadow, and solar eclipses — when the Moon comes directly between Earth and the sun.

Enric Palle, of the Spanish Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, and his co-authors point out in one of the papers that of the 342 planets known to be orbiting other stars, 58 ‘transit’ the stellar disk, meaning that they can be detected through a periodic decrease in the flux of starlight.

“The light from the star passes through the atmosphere of the planet, and in a few cases the basic atmospheric composition of the planet can be estimated,” they write. To calibrate our abilities to study those other atmospheres, it’s best to practice on Earth, they propose.

The team utilized the optical and near-infrared transmission spectrum of the Earth, obtained during a lunar eclipse. The technique is different from another common practice: observing the earthshine, or the light reflected from the dark side of the Moon.

“Some biologically relevant atmospheric features that are weak in the reflection spectrum (such as ozone, molecular oxygen, water, carbon dioxide and methane) are much stronger in the transmission spectrum, and indeed stronger than predicted by modelling,” Palle and his co-authors write. “We also find the ‘fingerprints’ of the Earth’s ionosphere and of the major atmospheric constituent, molecular nitrogen (N2), which are missing in the reflection spectrum.”

“Thus, the transmission spectrum can provide much more information about the atmospheric composition of a rocky planet than the reflection spectrum can.”

In the second paper, author Jay Pasachoff, who splits his time between Caltech and Williams College, in Massachusetts, reviewed a wealth of knowledge gleaned from solar eclipses.

“Observations of the Sun during total eclipses have led to major discoveries, such as the existence of helium (from its spectrum), the high temperature of the corona (though the reason for the high temperature remains controversial), and the role of magnetic fields in injecting energy into—and trapping ionized gases within—stellar atmospheres,” he writes.

Pasachoff notes that there’s no real end in sight for the usefulness of solar eclipses: “The Moon is receding from the Sun sufficiently slowly that our descendants on Earth will be able to see total eclipses for over 600 million years.”

But he predicts an eventual transition from ground-based to space solar telescopes, especially for getting at tantalizing solar mysteries like the nature of coronal heating.

“At present the paired science and beauty of solar eclipses remain uniquely available to scientists and others in the path of totality.”

Source: Nature

February 19, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Kaguya Captures Eclipse — From the Moon

Penumbral Lunar Eclipse as seen from the Moon. Credit: JAXA

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Here’s something you don’t see everyday. In fact, this is the first time this has ever been seen. On Feb. 10 Japan’s Kaguya spacecraft in orbit around the moon successfully took an image of a penumbral lunar eclipse. That’s the Earth passing in front of the sun, as seen from the Moon. From the Moon! The image was taken just at the moment when the Earth covered up most of the sun, creating a diamond ring effect. If we’re lucky on Earth, we can see this effect in a solar eclipse, when the Moon blocks the Sun as seen from Earth. Here, Earth’s atmosphere is lit up by the sun, creating the ring and just enough sunlight is sneaking by on one side of the Earth, creating the diamond. Sensational! Plus, there’s a movie of the eclipse, too!

A penumbral lunar eclipse is a phenomenon in which the Sun, Earth and Moon line up in tandem, and the moon is in the Earth’s penumbra, or, when you look from the Moon, the Sun is partially covered by the Earth (partial eclipse.) When the phenomenon occurs, the volume of light from the Sun to the Moon decreases, making the Moon’s surface look darker when you see it from the Earth.

The Bad Astronomer waxes eloquently about the event, so give him a visit.

Source: JAXA

January 26, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

January 26 Annular Eclipse Photos

Annular Eclipse on Jan. 26. Credit: M.R. Taufik

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An annular solar eclipse earlier today was visible in South-East Asia, southern Africa and Australia. Thanks to M.R. Taufik from Bontang, Indonesia for sharing this image of a complete ring or annulus of light from the sun peeking out from around the moon. Because the moon’s orbit is elliptical, its distance from Earth–and its apparent size—varies. Annular eclipses happen when the moon looks too small to completely cover the sun. Such an event that occurs about 66 times a century.

Image showing the region where the eclipse was visible. Credit: NASA

There were a few photo collections on Flickr of the eclipse; see here, and here. And here’s more from M.R. Taufik.

Here’s a great gallery of eclipse photos.

National Geographic has a few images, too.

The next solar eclipse will occur July 22 this year.

August 18, 2008December 24, 2015 by Tammy Plotner

August 17, 2008 Partial Lunar Eclipse Caught “Down Under”

Lunar Eclipse 'Down Under' by Joe Brimacombe

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If you read this week’s SkyWatcher’s Forecast, then you knew several areas of the world were in for a partial lunar eclipse event. While the Moon basically just did a glancing pass through the umbral shadow, the effect was still dramatic and I was hoping that at least one photographer out there would have a picture and story to share!

As luck would have it, one of our favorite AORAIA imagers, Joe Brimacombe was watching from his apartment in the city center in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. To the west: is the start of the Great Dividing Range – an 800 m plateau that extends almost to Melbourne and to the east – the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea. But, this isn’t the outback, this is the city. When Dr. Brimacombe isn’t practicing anaesthesiology… Joe does a lot of imaging from the roof of his eight story apartment building.

Says Brimacombe: “Imaging the partial eclipse from Cairns was not easy as twilight was underway before the umbral phase began with the moon always less than 15 degrees above the horizon. To make the best of it I used four imaging systems.” While all of the shots were unique and incredibly beautiful in their own way, the one I chose to share “was done with the 70-200 telephoto – shows the last 3 minutes before setting and the colors have not been adjusted.”

In the hours just before dawn in Australia, the was Moon quietly slipping into the Earth’s penumbral shadow, gently changing its coloration. During maximum, about two-thirds of the Moon immersed into the deeper shadow cone called the umbra, causing the darkening you see in these outstanding photographs. Part of the beauty of the event was the timing at which it happened. For Austalia, the event was at moonset, while for Western Europe, the United Kingdom and South Africa, the event was occuring at moonrise. The very best time and place to be was 9:24:49 p.m. Saturday evening in Cairo, Africa. Even though the last eclipse of 2008 is now over, let’s take a lesson from the event.

For SkyWatcher’s who live in the city – take heart! Sometimes practicing astronomy can be just as easy as taking the elevator to the roof. From there you can easily study solar and lunar activity and even the bright planets. While metropolitan lighting can obscure most starry vistas, about the only thing that can obscure moonlight is an eclipse! Just ask Dr. Joe…

July 28, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Friday’s Total Solar Eclipse can be Watched on the Internet

A solar eclipse at totality (NASA/F. Espenak)

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If you’ve ever wanted to see a solar eclipse, this might be the time to do it. It is a very rare chance to see an eclipse at totality because the Moon’s shadow is so small and, more often than not, it falls on sparsely populated regions of the planet. Often eclipse hunters are resigned to planning expensive trips to these locations, sometimes only to be disappointed by poor weather. But there’s an answer. This Friday’s eclipse will swing over Canada, the tip of Greenland, parts of Russia, China and Mongolia, including the Gobi desert, although nothing can replace actually travelling to one of these locations to witness this celestial event, NASA will transmit the eclipse live over the Internet. Excellent, now we can do some eclipse-chasing without leaving our armchairs…

Back in 1999, the south of the UK was fortunate to witness a total solar eclipse. I remember the excitement this caused on August 11th during that short British summer. Totality could be experienced in the southern-most county of Cornwall, but my hometown, Bristol, would see more than 90% totality. Although it wasn’t perfect, I decided to stay at home as the weather forecast for Cornwall wasn’t good, Bristol was better. Ultimately I wanted to see the “diamond ring” of the edge of the Sun peaking over the limb of the Moon. So, I kitted myself out. I constructed a rudimentary eclipse projector with a pair of binoculars and purchased a new tripod for my camera so I could photograph the projected image via the binocular set-up. I was good to go. But as with all British summers, I couldn’t rely on the weather. It turned out the weather front that was forecast for Cornwall had blown north ahead of schedule, blanketing my city and most of Cornwall. Alas, the eclipse was wasted on most of mainland Britain…

That’s the problem with trying to view the eclipse, often it will be in the wrong location at the right time, or the right location at the wrong time. Of course many eclipse hunters have luck on their side and are able to enjoy totality with clear skies, but for most of us have to make do with photos and videos taken by other people after the event. Not quite the same.

This Friday’s eclipse will be like most others, but this time it will start in Canada, pass over Greenland, Russia, China and Mongolia. If you are based in the USA, you might catch a glimpse of the event at sunrise in northeastern Maine. However, dedicated eclipse chasers like NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak will be travelling to northern China to witness the event. But it hasn’t been easy. As the Olympics are starting next week in Beijing, travel expenses have sky-rocketed, plus fuel prices can only make things worse. Many Chinese eclipse tours can cost $3,000-$6,000 and if you fancied a trip to the High Arctic on a Russian icebreaker, expect to pay $23,000.

So we don’t miss out, NASA will be transmitting the live eclipse (presumably via their homepage www.nasa.gov) starting well before its peak at 7:09 am EDT. Also, museums like the Exploratorium in San Francisco have special eclipse events scheduled so we can all have the chance of seeing the event as it happens. Again, it’s not the same as experiencing it yourself, but at least you can guarantee clear skies via the Internet…

Source: AP

June 24, 2008December 24, 2015 by Nicholos Wethington

Homer’s “Odyssey” May Chronicle Ancient Eclipse

It’s likely that sometime in your education career, an English teacher had you enjoy (or suffer through, depending on your tastes) at least part of that classic of classics, Homer’s Odyssey. It tells the story of Odysseus, a Greek general, who embarks on a 10-year journey back home after battling in the fall of Troy. The tale is filled with imagery that is referenced often in contemporary films and books. As old as it is, one would think that we’ve learned pretty much all we can from the book, but a new analysis of celestial events referenced in the Odyssey reveals that Homer may have documented a total solar eclipse.

Here’s a little background on the epic: Odysseus fights in the battle of Troy, which is believed to have occurred in approximately 1200 B.C. After the battle, he must find his way back to Ithaca in Greece, and the journey home is a harrowing one in which he is captured by the nymph Calypso, drifts on a raft at sea, battles a cyclops, resists the temptation of the Sirens and in general has hard luck. While he is away, his wife Penelope is living at his house with 108 suitors who are trying to convince her that she should accept her husband as dead and marry one of them.

Near the end of the story, a seer named Theoclymenus foretells the death of all the suitors, saying:

Poor men, what terror is this that overwhelms you so? Night shrouds your heads, your faces, down to your knees — cries of mourning are bursting into fire — cheeks rivering tears — the walls and the handsome crossbeams dripping dank with blood! Ghosts, look, thronging the entrance, thronging the court, go trooping down to the realm of death and darkness! The sun is blotted out of the sky — look there — a lethal mist spreads all across the Earth.

The reference to the Sun being blotted out of the sky on the day Odysseus returns home to retake his house and slaughter the suitors has been thought for a long time to be a reference to an actual eclipse, and was debated by astronomers, historians and classicists until it was finally decided that there was not enough evidence in the book to pinpoint a specific date for the event.

An analysis of overlooked passages in the book by Marcelo O. Magnasco, who heads the Laboratory of Mathematical Physics at Rockefeller, and Constantino Baikouzis of the Proyecto Observatorio at the Observatorio AstronÃ³mico in La Plata, Argentina reveals that there is enough evidence â€“ if their interpretation of the events is correct â€“ to place the eclipse on April 16th of 1178 B.C. Magnasco and Baikouzis reported their findings in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There are four celestial clues in the Odyssey that individually happen rather often, but rarely coincide within a short period of time. As Odysseus is making his way home on a raft, he navigates by the use of the constellations Bootes and the Pleiades, which only appear together in the sky in March and September. The Moon is new when Odyesseus returns home, and on that day Venus rises before dawn, which only happens during one-third of new moons. The most important clue, though, is that Homer refers to the god Hermes flying west to the island of Ogygia about a month earlier. This reference is likely to the planet Mercury, which is low in the sky and experiences retrograde motion â€“ seems to go backward in the sky relative to the stars – every 116 days.

Magnasco said, “Not only is this corroborative evidence that this date might be something important but if we take it as a given that the death of the suitors happened on this particular eclipse date, then everything else described in The Odyssey happens exactly as is described.”

Baikouzis and Magnasco analyzed all 1,684 new moons between 1250 and 1125 B.C. with commercial astronomy software for any dates that would match this confluence of events and came up with April 16th, 1178 B.C. Given that Homer matched the story to events in reality, this could help historians date the fall of Troy and shows that this great poet may also have had a penchant for astronomy.

Source: EurekAlert, Scientific American

May 22, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Solar Sonic Boom: Eclipses May Generate Atmospheric Shocks

Something strange happens during a solar eclipse. As the Moon’s shadow passes over the surface of the Earth, observers have noticed mysterious bands of shadow ripple ahead and behind the eclipse. It seemed possible that these bands were a result of constructive and destructive interference of sunlight around the limb of the Moon (an effect known as diffraction), or atmospheric turbulence may have had a part to play. However, a new theory has come to light. As the Moon’s shadow travels across the Earth’s surface, it may be possible that the shadow cools the atmosphere suddenly, creating a pressure difference. This gives rise to a sonic phenomenon: a shock front. This may refract the path of light from the lunar limb and through the atmosphere, creating the bands of light and dark. The solar eclipse may be a sonic phenomenon as well as an optical one…

If an object travels faster than the speed of sound, a shock will form. This shock is generated as a body passes through the atmosphere faster than sound can propagate. On Earth, at sea level, the speed of sound is approximately 1,225 kilometres per hour (or 761 miles per hour; i.e. the sound of an explosion would take an hour to travel a distance of 761 miles). Should an aircraft travel at 1,225 km/hr or beyond, the pressure waves it generates cannot keep up with the plane. In this case, a shock wave will form, more commonly known as a “sonic boom” for stationary observers.

So, back to the solar eclipse. How can the shadow of the Moon create a sonic boom? It’s only a shadow, it’s not a solid body moving inside the atmosphere; surely a shock isn’t possible? Actually, research carried out by astrophysicist Dr Stuart Eves who works with the Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) suggests it may be possible, and the phenomenon produced is known as “infrasound”. He believes that as the lunar shadow passes over the Earth’s surface, there is intense, local cooling of the atmosphere after the leading and before trailing edge of the eclipse. This cooling sets up a sudden pressure difference.

“As the eclipse shadow moves through the atmosphere, the sudden disappearance of the Sun changes the Earth’s temperature.” – Dr Eves.

If we consider that the eclipse shadow travels at supersonic velocities (1,100 miles per hour at the equator and up to 5,000 miles per hour near the poles), and the strong pressure gradient travels with the eclipse, a shock front is created in the atmosphere, generating infrasound waves. The sub-audible infrasound generated by this occurrence modifies the atmosphere to such an extent that it will deflect the path of light through the atmosphere. In this case, the light and dark bands around the eclipse shadow would be created by refraction.

Some scientists are sceptical about this new theory, but Eves thinks his explanation may also help to explain other phenomena during eclipses. Infrasound may be responsible for strange Foucault pendulum behaviour (the sensitive pendulums – used to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth – swing wildly during eclipses). The infrasound pulses may cause the ground to vibrate, interfering with the pendulum swing. Infrasound may also explain some bizarre animal behaviour during these events. Sub audible sound wave frequencies are known to distress or alarm birds, perhaps their strange behaviour during eclipses could be down to infrasound propagation.

Source: BBC

February 27, 2008December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Your Eclipse Photos, Part II

Like I said, you buried me with photos of last week’s total lunar eclipse. So here’s another batch. Thanks to everyone who went outside and remembered to bring a camera.

If you’re a budding (or veteran) astrophotographer, I highly recommend you check out the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today forum. We have a section just for people to post their astrophotos.

This first photograph comes from Joe from Michigan State University with a digital camera and a 4″ telescope.

Beth Katz

Brian Galka – Saskatoon

Rob Ratkowski – Maui

John Lyder – Trinidad and Tobago

Simone Bolzoni – Italy

Rick E. – Toronto

Joseph GuzmÃ¡n – Chicago

February 26, 2008December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Your Photos of the Total Lunar Eclipse

I asked and you delivered. Here is just a fraction of the eclipse photos Universe Today readers sent in. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Up first, here’s a mosaic of six images of the Moon captured by Thomas Jacobs using a 4.5″ reflector from Woodstock, Georgia in the US. The photos were captured through a pretty heavy cloud cover.

Rick Stankiewicz captured this photo of the eclipse from Thunder Bay at -24 degrees Celsius. Outside, watching the eclipse for almost 5 hours – now that’s dedication. You can see Saturn and Regulas in the image as well.

An image of the eclipse captured by John Gianforte at the University of New Hampshire observatory. They had more than 100 people on site, visiting the observatory during the eclipse. And I’m jealous to report… they had perfect weather for viewing.

Edward Willett captured this image from Regina, Saskatchewan. He says this was the best he could do under the frigid conditions, with a frozen 6-year old tugging at his arm to go back inside, but I think it’s pretty great.

And from South Africa, here’s Philip van Heerden’s photograph, taken near twilight.

Julia Tchervova

Dean and Betty Johnson