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Penumbral lunar eclipse

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Eclipses feed

Objects: The Moon

Simulation of the eclipse as seen from Cambridge
Time:       Altitude: °      Azimuth: °




The Moon will pass through the Earth's shadow between 18:49 and 23:17 EDT, creating a penumbral lunar eclipse. The eclipse will be visible any location where the Moon is above the horizon at the time, including from the Americas, Antarctica, Africa, Asia, Europe and south-western Russia.

It will be visible from Cambridge in the south-eastern sky. The Moon will lie 24° above the horizon at the moment of greatest eclipse.

Maximum eclipse will occur at 21:03 (all times given in Cambridge time).

The simulation to the right shows Moon's path relative to the Earth's shadow. The outer grey circle is the Earth's penumbra, within which the Earth blocks part of the Sun's light, making the Moon appear less bright than usual, but not completely dark. The inner black circle is the umbra, within which the Earth entirely blocks the Sun's light, and where the Moon's disk would appear entirely unilluminated.

By default the eclipse is drawn with the local vertical in Cambridge uppermost (Zenith up), so that it is orientated as you would see it looking up at the Moon. The compass shows the direction of celestial north relative to the local vertical. Alternatively, you can orientate the sky with celestial north orientated uppermost, by selecting the option North up.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

Selecting the option Diagram of Moon's path produces a static display of the Moon's path over the duration of the eclipse.

The lower panel shows the Moon's position in the sky relative to the horizon, as seen from Cambridge.

A penumbral eclipse

Like other lunar eclipses, penumbral eclipses occur whenever the Earth passes between the Moon and Sun, such that it obscures the Sun's light and casts a shadow onto the Moon's surface. But unlike other kinds of eclipses, they are extremely subtle events to observe.

In a penumbral eclipse the Moon passes through an outer region of the Earth's shadow called the penumbra. This is the outer part of the Earth's shadow, in which the Earth appears to cover part of the Sun's disk, but not all of it (see diagram below). As a result, the Moon's brightness will be reduced, as it is less strongly illuminated by the Sun, but the whole of the Moon's disk will remain illuminated to some degree.

The effect is only perceptible to those with very astute vision, or in carefully controlled photographs.

This is a rare occasion when the whole of the Moon's face will pass within the Earth's penumbra, and so the reduction of the Moon's brightness will be more perceptible than usual. Such events are called total penumbral lunar eclipses, and are rare because the statistical chance that the Moon will enter the Earth's umbra at some point is very high once it has passed fully within its penumbra, and this makes an eclipse a partial lunar eclipse.

The geometry of a lunar eclipse
The geometry of the Earth's shadow. Within the Earth's penumbral shadow, the planet covers some fraction the Sun's disk. Only within the smaller umbra does the Earth cover the entirety of the Sun's disk. Any areas of the Moon's surface that pass through the penumbra appear darker than usual as the Earth is obstructing some of the sunlight that usually illuminates them. Areas within the umbra, meanwhile, receive no illumination from the Sun at all.

Timing

The table below lists the times when each part of the eclipse will begin and end.

Local
time
UTC
18:4922:49Moon begins to enter the Earth's penumbra
21:0301:03Greatest eclipse
23:1703:17Moon leaves the Earth's penumbra

Visibility of the eclipse

Eclipses of the Moon are visible anywhere where the Moon is above the horizon at the time. Since the geometry of lunar eclipses requires that the Moon is directly opposite the Sun in the sky, the Moon can be seen above the horizon anywhere where the Sun is beneath the horizon.

The map below shows where the eclipse of September 16 will be visible.

Map of where the eclipse of September 1959 will be visible.
Map of where the eclipse of September 1959 will be visible. Click here to expand.

The eclipse geometry

Lunar eclipses occur when the Sun, Earth and Moon are aligned in a straight line, so that the Earth passes between the Sun and Moon and casts a shadow onto the latter's surface.

Each time the Moon orbits the Earth, it passes almost opposite to the Sun in the sky as it reaches Full Moon. If the Moon orbited the Earth in exactly the same plane that the Earth orbits the Sun, the Earth would pass between the Sun and Moon and create a lunar eclipse at Full Moon every month.

The Moon's orbit is tipped up by 5° relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun, represented by the grid above. Lunar eclipses only occur at full moon if they occur when the Moon is close to the Earth–Sun plane, at points called the Moon's nodes.

In fact, the Moon's orbit is tipped up at an angle of 5° relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun. This means that the alignment of the Sun—Earth—Moon line at Full Moon usually isn't exact. As a result, an observer on the Moon would see the Earth pass a few degrees to the side of the Sun.

In the diagram to the right, the grid represents the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. As it circles the Earth, the Moon passes through this Earth–Sun plane twice each month, at the points on the left and right labelled as nodes. A lunar eclipse happens only when one of these node crossings happens to coincide with Full Moon. This happens roughly once every six months, usually two weeks before or after a solar eclipse.

Further information

This eclipse is a member of Saros series 117. The position of the Moon at the moment of greatest eclipse is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Angular Size
The Moon 23h36m 1°30'S Pisces 30'40"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Next/previous eclipses

« Previous Next »
Visible from the Contiguous United States Worldwide Worldwide Visible from the Contiguous United States
04 Apr 1958 27 Oct 1958 Penumbral Lunar Eclipses 19 Feb 1962 19 Feb 1962
03 May 1958 24 Mar 1959 Lunar Eclipses 13 Mar 1960 13 Mar 1960
03 May 1958 08 Apr 1959 Eclipses 02 Oct 1959 02 Oct 1959

The sky on 4 Dec 2024

The sky on 4 December 2024
Sunrise
06:55
Sunset
16:11
Twilight ends
17:52
Twilight begins
05:14

3-day old moon
Waxing Crescent

16%

3 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 07:10 11:48 16:26
Venus 10:13 14:44 19:16
Moon 10:22 14:38 19:00
Mars 19:57 03:25 10:52
Jupiter 16:17 23:47 07:17
Saturn 12:15 17:46 23:17
All times shown in EST.

Source

[1] – 

The lunar eclipse predictions presented on this website were computed using EphemerisCompute.

This is an open-source tool which traces the positions of the Sun, Earth and Moon over the course of each eclipse and traces the path of the Moon through the Earth's shadow. It was written by the author and freely available for download from GitHub.

It takes the positions of each body from the JPL DE430 planetary ephemeris.

[2] – 

Espanak, F., & Meeus, J., Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses: -1999 to +3000, NASA Technical Publication TP-2006-214141 (2006)

[3] – 

The list of countries from which the eclipse is visible was computed on the basis of shape files available from DIVA-GIS.

License

You may embed the map above in your own website. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, which allows you to copy and/or modify it, so long as you credit In-The-Sky.org.

You can download it from:
https://in-the-sky.org/news/eclipses/lunar_19590917.png

Related news

16 Sep 1959  –  Full Moon
24 Sep 1959  –  Moon at Last Quarter
02 Oct 1959  –  New Moon
09 Oct 1959  –  Moon at First Quarter

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