Lunar eclipse Jan 31 2018. - off schedule, storms, etc

Let's imagine a scenario in which everyone is correct.
Perhaps there were interstellar clouds creating a larger diameter (thereby longer eclipse) at the poles of the Earth where the cosmic materials entered and coalesced into the atmospheric rivers fueling the subsequent storms.

a reply to: madmac5150

You must be up near the Canadian border. From St Marie's down to Grangeville, it's been a different story. Summer of 2012, it was too hot to put my infant in the car. The smoke that summer was so bad we stayed at my parents, who have AC, so baby could breathe filtered air. 2013, I couldn't touch the door handles on my car. Since then, it's been hellish summer after another. 2016, the first day of class was cancelled because of smoke. The huge fires around Lapwai, Marble Creek, Strychnine Creek. All St Joe Baldy's snow melted for the first time that people can remember. And the hundred year floods are now coming every other year.

My family's been around here since the 1930s, and it's been getting weird since 2003. Even my climate change denying relatives changed heart. Something is up.

I plan on photographing the lunar eclipse in the morning...I'll share a photo in this thread.

I paid for SkyFari 5 Plus just to get this pic. It seems to show a circle on the moon to depict the eclipse central area. Is this not the indicator for the center of the eclipse?


Here is how it displays today's details.

Weather is not cooperating here.

originally posted by: apdjbs1
I paid for SkyFari 5 Plus just to get this pic. It seems to show a circle on the moon to depict the eclipse central area. Is this not the indicator for the center of the eclipse?

That Moon looks larger than it should be in your image, so it's probably scaled up. Perhaps Skyfari has a glitch that when the Moon is scaled up it actually reads the Earth's shadow as falling upon it when actually the shadow would miss the smaller (correct-sized) Moon.

What I mean is that maybe the software knows where the Earth's shadow is, and when the Moon (even one that was scaled up in size) falls in that shadow, the software shows the shadow falling upon it.

Actually, it does make sense for the software to "know" when lunar eclipses would happen by knowing where the Earth's shadow is. That way, if the solar system model inside the software is set up correctly, it can find any lunar eclipse -- even in 50,000 years. Of course, if it doesn't ignore "user scaling of the Moon", then that would be a glitch.

But I'm just speculating; I don't have Skyfari.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Image of today's eclipse was scaled the same, as can be seen at top right of screen where they both indicate 100x136.6. Those angle values would have changed during scaling up/down.
Also, if you change the coordinates of location as North to be South and the West to be East then I think you should have Sun at equal distance above horizon.
I just now confirmed it to work on both eclipses. Maybe that's not accurate so no need for long explanation on why that doesn't work. Just was a thought. Also my phone is acting strangely now so it might be difficult to pursue this any further.

a reply to: apdjbs1

OK, but the image for today's eclipse might have the moon scaled up as well (and might even show the eclipse if it wasn't scaled up -- i.e., if it were normal size)

The Moon just looks huge in your two images, especially considering the from W to NW on the horizon you show for today's eclipse is 45 degrees of horizon.

And in your image from August 7, you can tell the Moon is scaled up by how much of Capricorn it is covering. Here is an image of the actual size of the Moon in Capricorn on that night:

Link to full size image


EDIT TO ADD: Even today's ecplise might not be shown correctly in Skyfari at 6:42 AM in Atlanta. At that time, only the Penumbra shadow was upon the Moon, not the Umbra. Again, that might be due to the fact the Moon looks scaled-up quite a bit (maybe 500% or more?)

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Well that would only make sense if the center of the red eclipse dot was not contained within the circle of the moon. You could scale it down to 6 pixels and the center of the eclipse would still be contained within the circle of the moon.

The red dot only shows up on the eclipse, and it isn't a permanent feature that continues when the moon moves off of it.
Although I do like the theory of nebula material creating the extended shadow, I still (at this moment) lean towards it being a standard eclipse.

a reply to: burgerbuddy

Clear as could be over Arizona and New Mexico. Started with a contrail that looked like it was glowing from all the moonlight, and ended with the eclipsed moon slowly fading right in front of me.

originally posted by: apdjbs1
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Well that would only make sense if the center of the red eclipse dot was not contained within the circle of the moon. You could scale it down to 6 pixels and the center of the eclipse would still be contained within the circle of the moon.

The red dot only shows up on the eclipse, and it isn't a permanent feature that continues when the moon moves off of it.
...

No. First of all, I underestimated how much the Moon is scaled up in your Skyfari app. I thought is was at least 500%, but actually I think it's more like 1200% (12X larger than reality). I estimated this by recreating how it looks in your screenshot from August 7 compared to Capricon.

Here's that recreation. As you can see, the Moon needs to be scaled up 12X for it to look that big relative to Capricorn:


So if we take your image that you posted above, which looks like this:


...And we superimpose a circle that is 12X smaller, which represents the actual size of the Moon, we can see that the Moon would NOT be in the Earth's shadow:



That green circle that represents the actual size Moon relative to Earth's shadow approximately matches (not coincidentally) what the size of the Moon looks like relative to the umbra and Penumbra shadows as illustrated in the information that could be found online about that eclipse:

Although I do like the theory of nebula material creating the extended shadow, I still (at this moment) lean towards it being a standard eclipse.

I would think that a hypothetical nebula between the earth and Moon that would block the Moon would also block out stars.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

You have now made it clear you disagree with the software engineers whom created Sky Safari, in saying that they forgot to handle scaling for eclipses. Ok.

Funny that it has been stated that the best time today of Maximum eclipse viewing (in Atlanta) is 7:30am. For me it was below my horizon at 7 and the sun was already getting bright. I saw the eclipse today but I'd have trouble proving it if I was to show how far off the ecliptical it appears in Stellarium.

originally posted by: apdjbs1
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

You have now made it clear you disagree with the software engineers whom created Sky Safari, in saying that they forgot to handle scaling for eclipses. Ok. ...

I don't know if they "forgot", but it does seem clear that given this image that the 1200% sized moon will fall within the shadow of the earth as generated by their software while actual size of the Moon (green circle) does not fall within the earth's shadow -- which is what IS expected.


Again, I have no idea why the software does this. I don't know if they "forgot" (as you put it) of if they simply understand that a 1200% scaled-up Moon would not be a true representation of the Moon, and don't expect people to think that anything associated with that 1200% scaled-up Moon it is a true astronomical representation.

Perhaps instead they "forgot" to remove specific eclipse moments that would draw attention to a certain phenomenon and ultimately leading to more questions, such as why don't astronauts talk about how big things grow in their space experiments. Seems all adjectives pertaining to size are removed altogether. And now I'll get helicopters again..lol

I'm sorry...I don't understand what you are saying.

Funny that it has been stated that the best time today of Maximum eclipse viewing (in Atlanta) is 7:30am. For me at least it was below my horizon at 7 and the sun was already getting bright. I saw the eclipse today but I'd have trouble proving it if I was to show how far off the ecliptical it appears in Stellarium

The Moonset in Atlanta this morning was at 7:35 AM (12:35 UTC).

According to the information below, the umbral shadow was just becoming visible at 6:48 AM Atlanta time (11:48 UTC) -- so you very well might have seen some of the umbra covering the Moon before moonset. The Penumbral shadow was on falling upon the moon even earler than that (beginning at 5:51 AM Atlanta time; 10:51 UTC), so you could have also seen that penumbra from Atlanta (as long as the dawn light was not too bright).


Maybe the sun was bright by then in Atlanta, but that's not relevant to the informtion shown above. It was well-reported that the eastern U.S. would NOT have a good view of this eclipse; the news stories about it (such as the one linked below) indicated was mainly going to be a western/Northwestern U.S. thing.

www.space.com...

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People
"I would think that a hypothetical nebula between the earth and Moon that would block the Moon would also block out stars."

Many people claimed it became very cloudy that night. It would only take a few people to accurately or falsely claim it was bright and beautiful to cast great doubt, therefore no idea what actually happened. Or perhaps material could have condensed in the gravity well between Earth and Moon before getting absorbed through the polar regions. This is just to say the nebula hypothesis does not necessarily mean a continuous blocking of all stars everywhere. However, regardless of what caused the eclipse, there would still need to be data obfuscation otherwise we wouldn't be looking for answers right now.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People
Abstract thinking has gone the way of the gigantopithecus, so I've removed the hint about mass accumulation as it's off topic anyhow.

I see you skipped over how Stellarium displays the ecliptic line far away from the moon during it's eclipse time today. Looks to be about 2 to 3 moon diameters away from it. I suppose you could claim it's another scaling error from another leading astronomy app?

originally posted by: apdjbs1
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People
Abstract thinking has gone the way of the gigantopithecus, so I've removed the hint about mass accumulation as it's off topic anyhow.

I see you skipped over how Stellarium displays the ecliptic line far away from the moon during it's eclipse time today. Looks to be about 2 to 3 moon diameters away from it. I suppose you could claim it's another scaling error from another leading astronomy app?

I don't know how far "too far" is. How large would the penumbra and umbra be in that stellarium image? The Earth's shadow is large enough that the eclipse could occur if the Moon is near to, but not intersecting with, the ecliptic.

According to this information below, the Moon had not yet intersected the actual ecliptic when it entered the umbra at 11:48 UTC (6:48 AM Atlanta time). By the time it was fully within the umbra (12:51 UTC; 7:51 AM Atlanta time), the Moon still had not intersected with the ecliptic.

In fact, it looks as if the Moon did not intersect with the ecliptic until toward the very end of totality and toward the end of the eclipse.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

It's interesting when the software indicates that the alignments are far off it seems to have the greatest support with the visuals (you provided from NASA) indicating the Earth casts such a wide shadow that the moon can be significantly far away from the ecliptic line, even for many hours, and even a partial eclipse can still be seen from east coast of Australia to eastern Brazil.

But yet when the software visually shows the alignments are perfect (as I've demonstrated in various pictures) it gets "not possible, software is incorrect and all witnesses must have seen clouds".

Max of lunar eclipse viewed from Salvador Brazil: Again, far away from ecliptical. 8-7-17


And below is when I seen it from Atlanta 8-7-17:
Much better alignments regardless of the b.s. math tricks to confuse, it's quite simple. Sunset and then moonrise nearly identical with moon on ecliptic line, we saw it, and software shows it (well at least for now..eventually software may purposely distort the ecliptic lines)

a reply to: apdjbs1

Don't know if this is the information your asking for, but I watched it all unfold at work today, it was actually pretty awesome... I didn't observe it constantly, or document exact times... since I was meant to be working, after all.

This was from Melbourne Australia, with a totally clear sky view...

At about (or just before) 9pm I noticed a massive looking yellow moon just above the horizon... at about 10pm it had changed into a light blue moon... at around 11.50pm I noticed the moon was almost totally covered in a light shadow... at around 12.50am it was totally covered in a deep dark shadow... by 2am, when I had time to observe it again, it was no longer in any shadow and had turned into an extremely bright white colour.

... admittedly, I don't really understand the whole science behind the different colours, or various shades of shadow the moon went though... without being bothered doing a few google searches... But never the less, it did make an otherwise usual mundane night at work actually kind of facinating.

a reply to: apdjbs1


The circle that is the penumbra and umbra is at one point* along the ecliptic -- i.e., the shadow could be thought of as just a small circle in space.

The only time the Moon would be eclipsed is when the Moon passes through that circle in space.

Once the Moon goes through that circle/shadow and is clear of that circle (as it did on August 7, 2017 by 4:51 PM Atlanta time/20:51 UTC), then it no longer would be eclipsed.

I say again, if you think you still saw an eclipse 4 or 5 hours after the eclipse was supposed to have ended, then you may have been seeing the Moon partially hidden by a cloud. It is not an uncommon thing to happen; It has happened to me that I thought the moon looked to be in the 1/4 phase, but it was actually almost full, and what I saw as a 1/4 phase was actually the almost-full moon partially covered by a cloud.

If the eclipse really lasted 4 or 5 hours longer than predicted, thousands and thousands of amateur astronomers everywhere would have said something. If only a handful of people said they saw an eclipse last 4 or 5 hours later than predicted, my money is on it being a cloud partially blocking the Moon (or some similar misidentification)



*Note to clarify:
Yeah, I realize that circle will move slowly as the Earth orbits the sun, but for simplicity, let's just say it is generally at one point in space along the ecliptic relative to the moon as the moon moves through it or past it.

a reply to: Subaeruginosa

Thanks for your input. The details of lunar eclipses are odd when the start/stop times are significantly off, or the lunar shading is misinterpreted.

When sources such as the below claim it wasn't bright white until 3am it makes people question their memory.
www.timeanddate.com...

Hopefully others will also give their experiences here.