Astronomy Down Under

Eclipse night

29 Aug at 10:56 by Wilson

Despite threats from clouds covering the sky, the sky was bright and clear for most of the event last night, which made for great viewing conditions. At the start of the umbral phase of the eclipse, the eastern sky was completely covered from my location, so I missed that. It started clearing up around the time of totality, and the first time I managed to see the Moon (still covered by light clouds) it was already entirely in the dark, with a nice, dark red-orange colour.

It only got better from there as the clouds moved away, so that it was possible to see the whole process of the Moon moving out of the shade and getting progressively brighter. It was beautiful with the naked eye, and even better with binoculars: you could easily see the colour gradient across the lunar globe, and it looked distinctly tri-dimensional.

So, it was a good spectacle. The next one for us, unfortunately, won’t be until 2011. We will, however, have a partial solar eclipse next February; I’ll write more about it as we get closer to the date.