Ewan's Corner

Posts Tagged ‘astronomy’

The total lunar eclipse last night was beautiful and awe-inspiring. I was lucky enough to be in Durban with perfectly clear Winter skies, and far enough from the city lights to have a perfect view of the whole show.

Our connected world meant I could simultaneously follow the eclipse from multiple viewpoints around the world in real time, including getting photos from friends and strangers with far better photographic equipment than mine. Events like this make Twitter truly come alive for me – watching the constant stream of excited tweets (and photos) with the #eclipse hashtag made me appreciate how wonderfully connected our little world is.

My little blog also went ballistic, setting a new all-time record of 1,240 views yesterday for my humble eclipse post, people were clearly searching for information.

My favourite eclipse media as I find it:

• Yannick’s first Eclipse shot as the moon was slowly devoured – http://yfrog.com/khudryaj
• I expect some more amazing shots from him once the post-processing is done and he has some spare time. No pressure.
• Top twitter images for #eclipse – https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23eclipse/grid/photos
• The always amazing Flickr Astrophotography pool (also see Moon Shots)
• Longest Total Lunar Eclipse in 11 Years Thrills Skywatchers (space.com)
• Also Total Lunar Eclipse of June 2011: First Photos (space.com)

A total lunar eclipse is visible from South Africa (actually most of Africa and Central Asia) tomorrow night, Wednesday 15th June – starting at 20h22, with the full eclipse lasting from 21h22 to 23h02 SAT, and the show over around midnight. This is a fairly rare event – the last one visible from SA was in 2008, and the next will only be in September 2015.

Visible across South Africa (weather permitting, but looks good) the full moon will be due East and about 55 degrees above the horizon (see the image to the right – courtesy of the brilliant Stellarium).

Thursday is a public holiday, so encourage your family to get outdoors and look upwards, it will be quite a sight!

• Total lunar eclipse for SA (News24)
• Watch the Flickr Astrophotography group for photos from people with some serious equipment
• Twitter, of course (although you’ll have to ignore the astrologers who will likely jump at the opportunity to spout their own brand of crazy)
• Johannesburg Planetarium

EPOXI (the current mission for the already successful spacecraft Deep Impact) flew past comet Hartley 2 (103P/Hartley) at 4pm SA time today, and shortly afterwards began returning image data.

Deep Impact zoomed past the comet at over 43,000 km/h – and was around 700 km from the comet at closest approach.

Hartley 2 is a fascinating comet, approximately 2km long and 400m wide at the most narrow section, and streaming out jets of gas (it also jetted out huge amounts of cyanide gas in September).

• http://epoxi.umd.edu/
• http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/epoxi/
• Comet Hartley 2 Fires Out Poison Gas as NASA Probe Nears (space.com)
• Collage of the 5 images during the closest part of the flyby (closest approach of 700km).

More data will be released over the next few days and weeks by the teams involved.

This is indeed a great time to be alive and witness to space exploration.

A stunning view from Gough Island (40º20’57.7S 9º52’49.2W – Google Earth or Maps) during the partial solar eclipse this morning, from a live webcam.

We only saw 56% coverage in Durban (65% in Capetown) – thankfully the clouds were patchy so we had plenty of time for some great views.

Today also marked South Africa’s first formal day of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. I doesn’t matter how many eclipses I see, they are still awe-inspiring and somehow mystical events. I’ve seen two full eclipses before (one in Tshipise in Musina and the other from Lusaka, Zambia) and I plan to follow any others I can get to :-)

A sense of scale, and relative importance.