Ewan's Corner

Posts Tagged ‘southafrica’

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

Another great visualisation which puts things into perspective, courtesy of Kal Krause (of Kai’s Power Tools fame, now there’s some personal nostalgia). Definitely an improvement on the previous version, although still likely to fire up the “continent vs country” debate… but it gets the point across!