The Next
LUNAR
ECLIPSE
from
IoM
The
next lunar eclipse occurs on 4th June 2012. This is a partial
eclipse. It will not be visible from the Isle of Man. Click
here for details.
The next eclipse visible from the Isle of Man occurs on the 28th November 2012. However, it is a penumbral eclipse and will not be of special interest visually. Also, it will occur at moonrise (16.02h) and the moon leaves the penumbral shadow at 16.51h when it will be only 4.6° above the horizon. Click here for details.
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A
total lunar eclipse, visible from the Isle of Man occurred on 21st
December 2010. Unfortunately, the weather on the island was poor with
lots of cloud cover. Only two reports of some observation of the
eclipse were reported. Graham Gordon was able to see the very
beginning of the start of the eclipse but by the time totality had
arrived, he was totally clouded out. Similarly, Glyn Marsh was able
to get some views of the beginning of the eclipse through gaps in the
cloud. Through a finder telescope he was able to see some dark areas
of red colour developing. Alas, the cloud eventually covered the sky
and obscured everything!
The
umbral phase of the eclipse started at 06.32:37 when the moon was be
15° above the horizon and setting. Totality started at 07.40:47
when the moon had dropped down to 6.4° above the horizon. The sky
would have become bright as dawn arrived and the moon set at 08.48h
still in the total phase.
Click
here for details.
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On the
last day of 2009, the moon went into a small partial eclipse. At
maximum, it was covered by only 8%
of the Earth's shadow.
December had two Full Moons, so this eclipse also occurred upon the
face of a
Blue Moon!
Image by
Malcolm Lambert. Port Erin. Isle of Man. 18.57h UT
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 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.
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.
