I see we have a full lunar eclipse coming on Feb 20/21 (depending where you live).

I know that even during a full eclipse the Moon is still visible with a coppery hue, due to the refraction of light around the Earth.

Now that we have a bunch of probes in orbit of the Moon, is there any plan / is it possible to take an image of the Earth from the Moon during totality? (or has this already been done?)

I would think that a picture of the Earth surrounded by a red ring would be amazing!

I read somewhere that it will be possible to see both the setting sun and the rising orange moon in Los Angeles that evening. I'm curious how high you have to be to get that view - it might be the perfect time to visit Griffith Observatory!

Now that sounds like a perfect job for Kaguya's HDTV camera. Depending on the totality duration the numbers might not work out, but my hunch tells me Kaguya should be able to witness at least one Earthrise/set if the totality is over 1 hr in duration.

That ought to be a spectacular sight, a brilliant orange ring of light rising over a dark, blood-red lunar horizon. I wonder what the topography would look like at that phase and lightning intensity. Certainly sounds like an awesome shot to take if available.

Interesting thought! In the past I was too wondering how a total lunar eclipse would look from the moon. Let's cross the fingers Kaguya will be able to take some (stunning?) HDTV shots of this event. Though the timeline is pretty tight, especially when considering that Kaguya needs about 120 minutes for one revolution.

>I read somewhere that it will be possible to see both the setting sun and the rising orange moon in Los Angeles that evening.

And what a sight! It looks like the Moon will just be entering the inner dark shadow as it rises.

>I'm curious how high you have to be to get that view - it might be the perfect time to visit Griffith Observatory!

Griffith might be nice, but I don't recall if the mountains at the observatory block the eastern horizon. I recall hiking to a lookout point a couple miles east of the Observatory when trying to see the clouded out Annular eclipse and we were looking down on it against the city background. I would at any rate suggest getting away from the city lights as much as possible. I fear that only the latter portion of totality will be seen in or close to a night time sky from Southern California. (I am in Palm Springs)

I love Lunar eclipses, the subtle colors visible inside the Earth shadow can be seen by the human eye better than what all but the most dedicated photographic efforts can record. I think rapidly shot RGB filtered grayscale images should do the job but practically all film and most digital images I have seen render the shadows as little more than a garish red orange. I have in the past 30 years of taking down color observations at one time or another seen muted examples of color from the entire spectrum within the umbra region. I have seen some video images which do surprisingly well despite the limited exposure latitude inherent to that medium.

A summary of my observations of the last such eclipse can be seen at the top of this page:

http://www.donaldedavis.com/BM07WEB/BM07page2.html

Earlier Lunar Eclipse observations are at the bottom of this page:

http://www.donaldedavis.com/2003NEW/ASTROOBS2.html
This starts with a made-for-print reproduction oil painting exaggerating the colors, and later digital efforts aspiring to capture a visual impression on the screen.

Don

Surveyor III was able to get some variously filtered images of an eclipse in 1966. One color-composite version is shown here. Of course, HDTV would be Really Cool if it can be done...

"Surveyor III was able to get some variously filtered images of an eclipse in 1966. One color-composite version is shown"

A couple years <or decades, it feels like now> I posted here a considerably improved pair of the Surveyor 3 images, reassembled from good quality black and white color separations published in JPL TR series reports on Surveyor.

The image linked to had massive overexposure saturating part of the bright limb and "blooming" of the overexposed image on the vidicon detector. The original NASA Press Release image was horrible, even given that data's blooming problem.

The other image was actually the much better image but was never press released in color. In my reconstruction, you can see parts of the faint blue ring of upper atmospheric scattering of sunlight with orange-red blobs where gaps in clouds on the limb let direct sunlight get refracted around the limb to reach the camera.

I've tried poking around the archives here and I don't find the post. It's not on my internetting computer at the moment, so I'll have to dig for it.

NASA Archive pic

Everyone, quickly, get on your knees and pray! Some great evil monster has swallowed up the Moon!



All seriousness aside, it's a really visually stunning eclipse. I don't have the proper imaging equipment, or I'd take a pic and share it. As of about five minutes ago, there was a nice bright white rind along the southeast limb, and the rest of the face of the Moon was colored a lovely shade of copper... *grin*...

-the other Doug

Strange coincidence - Apollo 12 witnessed a solar eclipse while carrying back from the Moon the camera of Surveyor III, which had also photographed a solar eclipse.

Beautiful eclipse tonight! I hope lots of folks got to see it.

"Beautiful eclipse tonight! I hope lots of folks got to see it."


Here in New Jersey, we really lucked out with the weather tonight. The astronomy club I belong to scheduled an eclipse viewing event, and when we first arrived, there were a lot of clouds, and the moon kept alternating between being visible and totally obscured. It was also somewhat hazy. But by the time the eclipse really got underway, the sky had totally cleared to the point that we had what is probably the clearest sky possible at the observatory, which is not in a dark sky location. Everybody was thrilled with the beautiful view, and we had the opportunity to see it with binoculars and telescopes people had brought. Since the sky got so clear, we used the observatory's 24 inch telescope to view Saturn along with several of its moons. The only drawback was it was quite cold, probably in the 20s. Still, viewing this eclipse was a wonderful experience, and I can't wait to see the pictures several club members took.

While I got a good view of this eclipse, I didn't take a long one. Here in Frostbite Falls... er, um, Minneapolis, Minnesota, it was about four below zero F (~20 below C) during mid-eclipse. It's down to about 10 below now (somewhere around 23 below C)... good for clear air, not so good for comfortable outdoor viewing.

-the other Doug

I had a view of the eclipse for a while (in other words, between clouds). Here are a few shots (I haven't even downloaded all the pictures from the camera yet).

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment

Very clear sky over Marseille in France.

Some pictures taken this night :

Rising over Puget Mount at 19:00 :


Before entering the shadow of the earth, Regulus and Saturn are following the very bright moon :


And some eclipse phasis :

Continuing the diving into the shadow


Saturn and Regulus began to lightens more:


Shadow progress :


Sort of color that I like :


And finally, full eclipse :

Larger view to see stellar field :

And labels :
The ending :






A recapitulative board with view center on Earth shadow :


Avec l'ombre de la Terre :


Some humidity this ending night (this is the reflector I used to put my numeric camera in parallel):

Very nice Ant! Exactly how it looked in Boston.

-Floyd

I wonder how Chang'e and Kaguya came thru it.

Doug

The eclipse began under a rare rainy sky in Palm Springs, Calif., and as totality began I dispaired of seeing the event. The skies then cleared about a third of the way through totality and I set up my 6 inch reflector, binocculars, video camera and drawing stuff. I hastily drew isophotes on a set of printed out full moon images within which color and brightness information could be noted, using the WWV time signal.
I notice again the tendency of even excellent digital camera pictures to shift the color balance toward garish oranges and reds. The reality as seen by at least this pair of eyes is more subtle and varied. I used the video later to help in drawing the tonal values within the shadow.
This eclipse, at least starting at mid totality, appeared fairly muted in the intensity and range of colors within the Earth shadow. The southern portion near the shadow boundary was a light golden yellow, and the eastern part of the disk displayed a nice spectral gradation to muted orange and duller rusty red. The western Moon shadow colors at that time were less saturated, duller, with a sharper gradation to the dark brown shadow core, or umbra region. The brighter western colors faded in the latter part of totality, and a pale gray lighting appeared along the SW limb, displaced N from the closest part of the shadow edge, shortly before totality ended. As the sunlit Moon returned the shadow colors moved off the disk and faded in the brightning sky. (P.S. I'm having trouble uploading an image file-it never stops telling me it's uploading)

Don

Curse the tropical climate

The eclipse was scheduled to take place at 4am here in Dar es Salaam.
There was not a single cloud in the sky at midnight so you can imagine my dismay and frustration when a cloud cover developed and did not let up till sunrise!

By then the moon had set...great pictures Ant. how I wish I could have seen it myself.

Click to view attachment

Ha! used another browser....Here is an attempt at my visual impression of the Lunar eclipse.

Yes! Your 3:38 and 3:51 images are *exactly* what I saw with my naked eye. A coppery feel to the whole scene, edging to an ochre-ish gold along the southeast limb.

-the other Doug

This was the best I got, quite a lot of high cloud so very hazy, cloud thickened approaching totality didn't see anything there after

Eclipse was due between 01.30 and 05.00 here, so I took the next day off work in anticipation of being too tired after watching the eclipse to function... needn't have bothered, because after 2 weeks of almost perfectly clear nighttime skies here in the Lakes the cloud rolled back in Wednesday night like that scene from Independance Day when the alien ship glides over the mountains, and by 2am next morning the sky was just a flat dome of orange. No hope of seeing anything.

Then to rub salt into the wound, I couldn't even enjoy my day off because a workman spent the whole day digging up my living room floor, looking for the water pipe that was leaking into the shop beneath my flat, so I spent the whole day tramping around town keeping out of his way, in the rain, going back every hour to find yet more devastation...

Great weather tuesday night, good weather thursday night, BLOTTO wednesday night. grrrrrrr.

(Another ancient thread rises from the dead...)

Did this ever come to light? I'd be interested to see it.

Random Googling found some monochrome images (bottom of page) that look rather more interesting than the referenced one. No idea of provenance (I assume Surveyor 3 data is not available online, in general).