Lunar Eclipse 8th November

Dave Lillis mentioned in his post about the May total lunar eclipse in 2004. Unfortunately, we'll run into problems with this one too regardless of the weather!

from my Sky-High 2004 publication (twilight time is for Dublin);


"Moonrise is just round about when totality begins for the May 4th eclipse and so we will see most of the total phase with the sky still brightly twilit. We also miss the pre-totality partial stages. Nautical twilight ends at 21h 38m that evening (Sun 12° below horizon).

Observers in Namibia witness an extremely rare event during totality of the May 4th eclipse — a graze occultation of the wide double star Alpha2,1 Librae."

the other 2004 total lunar eclipse is on October 28th in the early hours. We then have a wait until 2007 March 3rd. I know Brian Seales and a few others will be in Madagascar for the May 4th event (main trip is for the April 19th "shark fin" partial solar eclipse at sunset). Sounds pretty neat!


John Flannery,
SDAS

At least we'll catch the second half of the eclipse (according the starry night pro) in a blue sunsetting sky, beats nothing, especially given that there will be a scarcity of eclipses in the next few years.
Might prove to be an interesting photographic test.

The results of the Lunar Parallax experiment have been posted.

homepage.ntlworld.com/p.lawrence1/lunar_parallax.html

Cheers,
~Al