Last night, 3rd March 2007, a lunar eclipse was visible thanks to nice clear skies in the South of England where I am staying for a couple of weeks. It’s the first eclipse I’ve really watched, not that there is a lot of action, but it’s a sight you don’t get to see very often.
Anyway, I took a series of photos and created a sequence showing the eclipse. I didn’t do it very scientifically so the shots are a little inconsistent but it didn’t turn out too bad. Click on the image to see a larger version on my Flickr account.
The lunar eclipse is caused by the shadow of the earth covering the moon. The red colour that you can see during the time when the moon is fully eclipsed is caused by sunlight passing through volcanic dust in the earth’s atmosphere. The more dust there is, the redder it will be. With fairly recent volcanic activity of the last decade, the amount of dust was sufficient to make the moon quite red, although I couldn’t capture it with my camera very well.
You can find out more about lunar eclipses on NASA’s Lunar Eclipse page.
that’s really cool. I think I’ve only watched one lunar eclipse and one solar eclipse.