The last
LUNAR ECLIPSE
visible from The Isle of Man
occurred
on 21st February 2008, details of which can be found here.
and would have been seen as a total eclipse from the Island. The event spanned
about six hours, beginning at 00:34:59 UT and finishing at 06:17:16 UT
View a QuickTime
movie (1.14MB) of the eclipse, as visible from the Island,
speeded up x3,000 here. Movie created with Starry Night 6.
The
first and only lunar eclipse visible from the Island in 2007 occurred on 3rd
March.
Below, imaged by Dave Storey, is a montage of the event.
The Microsoft Spreadsheet links below detail all lunar eclipses for the past 50 and future 50 or so years. They require Office 97 or later, but if you do not have that software, you can download a free Excel Viewer (for Windows PCs) from Microsoft. The four files have been modified to default to the latitude and longitude of the Isle of Man Observatory. All eclipse calculations are by Fred Espenak, and he assumes full responsibility for their accuracy. Credit is detailed accordingly within the spreadsheets, Some of the information presented in these tables is based on data originally published in Fifty Year Canon of Lunar Eclipses: 1986 - 2035.
Lunar Eclipses: 1951 - 1975 (Excel File - 128 KB)
Lunar Eclipses: 1976 - 2000 (Excel File - 124 KB)
Lunar Eclipses: 2001 - 2025 (Excel File - 124 KB)
Lunar Eclipses: 2026 - 2050 (Excel File - 124 KB)
The last lunar eclipse of 2006 visible from the Isle of Man took place on the evening of Thursday, 7th September, (as seen in this animation of the event, 600KB). No one really expected much from this event, as the eclipse was only a small % partial eclipse; occurring at moonrise from the IoM. As chance would have it, this date coincided with our "first Thursday in the month" meeting, the first time since the observatory was constructed that an eclipse has occurred on a club night. A glance outside when this event was mentioned by our Chairman during his address, resulted in a complete stoppage of the meeting, for the view was truly spectacular for a partial eclipse.
A number of members had binoculars with them
that night, so quite some while was spent outside observing the phenomenon.
Unknown to the majority, Dave Storey was his usual prepared self, taking photos
with his digital camera. When we all trooped back into the meeting room, Dave
had already prepared the images from his camera ready for us to view on the
data projector! What an astronomer!
And below is the primary picture that Dave took
on the night, for your edification.
People often ask why isn't the moon totally dark
when Earth gets between it and the sun? It's because of Earth's atmosphere, as
detailed in the diagram below. Note that the diagram is not to scale.
(continued below)
White light from the Sun is
a mixture of all the colours of the rainbow. When a ray of "white"
sunlight passes at grazing incidence through Earth's atmosphere, molecules and
aerosols in the air scatter blue light in all directions (this is why the sky
is blue). The remaining reddish light is bent (refracted) into Earth's umbral
shadow zone, giving the eclipsed Moon a coppery glow. Copyright-free image credit: Tony Phillips.