Lunar Eclipse Tonight

**MikeJones** · December 20th, 2010, 06:21 PM

Will be a lunar eclipse tonight. I think it starst around 1 am and finishes up around 5. I believe it will be in full eclipse around 2:30 if I can find a a timeline I will post it. Should be pretty neat. Also will be on Winter solstice first time this has happend in over 4 hundred yrs. So maybe Columbus saw it happend. If he did see It I wonder if he was freezing his ass off.

**Milk3** · December 20th, 2010, 06:59 PM

I bet he was! I know I am.
I'll def. have to stay up to see this.

**MikeJones** · December 20th, 2010, 07:04 PM

Im gonna try and see some of it. Here is a good info link

SkyandTelescope.com - Homepage Observing - A Sky-High Lunar Eclipse

**imported_elp6n** · December 20th, 2010, 07:23 PM

Hope the cloudy forecast doesn't interfere too much

**SBG** · December 20th, 2010, 08:08 PM

The partial eclipse begins at 1:32 a.m. EST, with the first contact of the Moon with Earth's dark umbra. Totality runs from 2:40 to 3:52 a.m. EST, when the Moon will glow dimly in subtle hues of orange, red, or brown from the weak sunlight that's refracted around Earth's edge. Then partial phases resume until 5:02 a.m. EST, with the last fringe of shading fading away about a half hour later.

**SBG** · December 20th, 2010, 08:09 PM

Tuesday in the Northern Hemisphere is the first day of astronomical winter, the day when the sun reaches its southern-most point in the sky and begins its swing northward.

It also, coincidentally, happens to be a day when the moon will pass fully into the earth’s shadow.

Full lunar eclipses are by no means rare — they happen on average once a year. That means they have roughly a one-in-365 chance of landing on any particular calendar date you happen to pick, and that means it’s pretty uncommon to have one happen on the night of the solstice.

It hasn’t happened since Dec. 21, 1638 — four years before the death of Galileo and the birth of Isaac Newton. And it won’t happen again until Dec. 21, 2094.