Total Eclipse of the Sun in South America July 2; Future U.S. Eclipses

Tomorrow, July 2, there will be a total eclipse of the Sun visible in Chile and Argentina. A live webcast is planned at: https://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse

Another total eclipse will be visible from southern South America on Dec. 14, 2020.

Looking further ahead, an annual eclipse will be visible on a path that goes across the U.S. on Oct. 14, 2023.

And Apr. 8, 2024 another total eclipse will sweep across the U.S. from Texas to New England. For a clear map of this eclipse, see: https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/april-8-2024

(Shameless plug: Dennis Schatz and I have written a children's book all about eclipses, called "When the Sun Goes Dark," for the non-profit National Science Teachers' Association Press. See: https://www.nsta.org/store/product_detail.aspx… )

A free app about eclipses, called "Totality" is available from astronomer Jeff Bennett, at: https://www.bigkidscience.com/eclipse/

[Our photo is by astronomer Rick Fienberg and shows a sequence of images before, during, and after a total eclipse.]

Government Shutdown Expands: Moon Goes on Furlough Tonight

In the above table, you can see the timing of tonight total eclipse of the Moon for all the North American time zones. Click on the image to see it bigger.

Don't worry about the first and last rows of the table. Just focus on when the partial eclipse begins (when the Earth's shadow first starts to move across the Moon) and when the total eclipse begins (the Moon is full covered by shadow and turns red.)

Remember, if there are clouds, this eclipse last a long time, so come back out after a few minutes and see if you can glimpse the Moon. Often the Moon plays hide and seek with layers of clouds, and patience will pay off.

Full details of the eclipse and what to watch for are here:
http://bit.ly/mooneclipse2019

Thanks to Sky & Telescope magazine for the table.  The composite photo below is by amateur astronomer and NASA educator, Brian Day.  Note the Earth's round shadow in the outer images and the coppery red color of the eclipsed Moon (the Earth's atmosphere bends red colors of light more effectively than other colors on to the shadowy face of the Moon.)

Heads Up: Total Eclipse of the Moon Sunday Evening January 20

On Sunday evening, January 20, there will be a nice total lunar eclipse (where the Earth’s shadow darkens the full moon) visible in all of North America. Since this is the day before Martin Luther King Day in the U.S., many students will not have school the next day and can stay up to enjoy the celestial spectacle with their families.

Total eclipses of the Moon are perfectly safe to look at, don’t require special viewing equipment, and are visible all over one hemisphere of planet Earth. Your eyes are just fine to see the show. This is quite a contrast with the total eclipses of the Sun, where viewing can sometimes hurt your eyes, special equipment is a big help, and the best show is only visible in a narrow path. As Bernie would say, the lunar eclipse is for the 99%, not just the special 1%!

A more detailed information sheet I put together (with questions and answers, plus the timing in each time zone of the continental U.S.) can be found at:
http://bit.ly/mooneclipse2019 

Here is wishing you a cloudless evening, and a few hours thinking about the heavens and not the craziness in Washington.

[Our beautiful photo is by Conrad Jung of the Chabot Space and Science Center, 2007]

North America to See An Eclipse of the Blue Moon January 31

On Wednesday morning, January 31, residents of North America (and particularly those on the west coast) will experience a rare triple event:

* The full moon will enter the Earth’s shadow and show a total eclipse (turning the full moon into a dark reddish disk)

* This will be the second full moon in the same month – something we call a blue moon

* And it will be a “supermoon,” where the Moon is full just as it’s closest to our planet Earth (this last thing by itself is not especially rare; in fact it will be third “supermoon” in a row).

Having all three together is unusual. The last time we had a blue moon totally eclipsed in the U.S. was more than 150 years ago.

Here are the times of the eclipse of the Moon on the morning of January 31 in different U.S. time zones:

Eclipse Circumstance                  Pacific Mountain Central Eastern

Partial eclipse begins                 3:48 am 4:48 am 5:48 am 6:48 am
Total eclipse begins                   4:52 am 5:52 am 6:52 am ---
Total eclipse ends                      6:08 am 7:08 am ---         ---
Partial eclipse ends                    7:11 am ---         ---         ---

--- means that Moon has already set (is below the horizon)

You can see that in the eastern half of the U.S., the full Moon sets before the total eclipse or just as the eclipse is getting good, but in the western half of the U.S., some or all of the eclipse will be ready to delight those who can get up early (before the Sun does) that morning.

If you are planning to get up to see the last part of the total eclipse, there is one other factor to keep in mind. The eclipsed Moon is setting in the west as the Sun is rising in the east. That means you have to have a clear sight-line toward the western horizon for the eclipse. If buildings or trees block your view in that direction, you could miss the event. So scout out the location where you plan to be in advance. (Maps and charts can be seen at: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/obser…/january-lunar-eclipse/ )

Note: Only the total eclipse turns the Moon an eerie dark red (because of the bending of red light in the Earth’s atmosphere.) Once the total eclipse is over, the reddish effect that eclipse fans like (and the media call a "blood moon") will be gone.

Our remarkable photo, by Elias Politis, shows a 2011 lunar eclipse sequence over the Acropolis in Greece. Click on the image to see it larger.

Double Eclipse of the Sun; Eclipse Statistics

My favorite picture so far of the recent eclipse of the Sun is the one you see with this post. Photographer Simon Tang (who gave me permission to reproduce it here) took a sequence of photos from Huron, California, recording the International Space Station crossing the face of the Sun just as the Moon was eclipsing it.

Each of the images of the Space Station is less than 1/1000th of a second long, since the Station moved across the Sun in less than a second. The image is taken in H-alpha, a specific color of light emitted by hot hydrogen atoms in the Sun's lower atmosphere. You can see the Station close up in our second image.

NASA reports impressive statistics for the Aug. 21 eclipse: 90 million page views on NASA's two websites, 40 million views of the live broadcast, 3.6 billion users on social media, and the most popular Instagram image ever -- all of a celestial event with no politics, no national or religious affiliation. It was just nature, doing its thing, predictably, reliably, spectacularly.

In our own project, 2.1 million eclipse glasses were distributed to 7,100 libraries -- all to be given away free to the public. I was one of the astronomers leading the effort, and want to thank the Moore Foundation, Google, and NASA, for supporting the program to allow public libraries to help their patrons observe the eclipse safely. If only we could come together this well about other things!

Click on the images to see them bigger.

A Short Eclipse Mega-movie Already Available

A first 2.5-minute version of the Google Eclipse Megamovie is now out and can be viewed at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7BCzm4IGpY

This is actually version 2, which shows a map at the bottom right indicating where along the path of the total eclipse in the U.S. each image comes from. The team soon expects to have a much longer version with many more pictures taken during the 1 hour 37 minutes that the eclipse was over the continental U.S. stitched together.

So far over 6,000 images from the serious photographer volunteers, over 11,000 images via the online image upload from the public, and over 45,000 images via the App the team developed have been received, according to a message I got minutes ago from project leader Laura Peticolas of the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Lab. What a nice example of citizen science!

I hope you all had good eclipse viewing Monday. I was in central Oregon with family and friends, and got a spectacular view of the total eclipse, with beautiful red prominences (great fountains of hot material being driven outwards from the surface of the Sun) visible through binoculars. The attached image above, from one member of our group, Dr. Cary Sneider, gives you a little taste of what we saw.

The other attached image, below, by Anna Rich, shows a car on the highway, on its way home from Oregon, expressing a sentiment many felt.

For anyone who missed the lead-up to the eclipse, a fun way to get caught up might be my conversation with veteran newscaster Gil Gross, at: http://fraknoisuniverse.libsyn.com/website

This eclipse special might be the first of a series of podcasts we will do on astronomical news and ideas, starting later in the fall. Stay tuned for more on what the producer's are calling "Fraknoi's Universe."

Eclipse of the Sun Coming in 2 Weeks! And Another in 7 Years!

The path from top left to bottom right is the Aug. 21, 2017 eclipse

The path from bottom left to top right is the Apr. 8, 2014 eclipse

In just two weeks, on August 21, all of North America will experience an eclipse of the Sun. The eclipse will be total on a narrow path going across the U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina. The rest of the continents will see a partial eclipse, with a big bite taken out of the Sun by the disk of the Moon.

If you don't get to see this one, there will be another U.S. total eclipse in only seven years (on April 8, 2024.) If you missed out getting a hotel room or a campground in the zone of totality for August's eclipse, you have no excuse now for 2024! (See the attached map; click on it to see it bigger.)

I've had the opportunity to do quite a bit of media outreach for the eclipse; you can:
1. hear me as part of the eclipse special on the "Big Picture Science" radio show: http://www.bigpicturescience.org/…/eclipsing-all-other-shows
2. see me speaking on the eclipse at the SkeptiCAL convention sponsored by the Bay Area Skeptics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52k9TdQdPNc
3. read my comments as part of legendary science journalist David Perlman's last science article (David, who covered science news at the San Francisco Chronicle, is retiring at the age of 99! May we all have a career as long and respected as his.): http://www.sfchronicle.com/…/Total-solar-eclipse-to-create-…

This week many media and people are waking up to the coming of the eclipse at last. Our free 8-page booklet all about it and how to view it safely can be downloaded from the page: http://nsta.org/solarscience Do read through it to get hints about how best to see and explain this rare sky phenomenon.

A free app, called TOTALITY, can be downloaded from both the Apple and Android app stores, and it will tell you exactly when and how the eclipse will be visible in your location.

If you haven't yet gotten safe eclipse-viewing glasses, your first stop should be your local public library. (Thanks to the Moore Foundation and Google, our project to distribute 2.1 million eclipse glasses has gotten glasses to almost 7,000 public libraries nationwide.)

If your library doesn't have any, here is a page to tell you all the reliable sources of eclipse glasses that are certified to meet the standards for protecting your eyes set by eye-doctors: https://eclipse.aas.org/resources/solar-filters

And for kids, please forgive me if I mention our children's book, "When the Sun Goes Dark," now in its fourth printing. Copies have temporarily run out in some places, but the publisher has it at: http://nsta.org/eclipse

Here is wishing you clear skies for August 21.

Eclipse stamp issued by the US Postal Service

changes the picture you see when you touch it

Eclipse Talk on YouTube and New Kind of Eclipse Stamp

   

We are exactly two months away from the eclipse of the Sun that is coming to North America on August 21, 2017. I gave an illustrated, non-technical talk on the eclipse in the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture series, and it is now available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Folgs58oI The talk has lots of information and visuals on where and how the eclipse will be visible, how to watch it safely, and how the U.S. is preparing for the huge crowds that are expected in the narrow zone where the eclipse will be total.

   Yesterday, the U.S. Postal Service issued its first ever "thermochromic" stamp in honor of the eclipse. That means when you touch the picture, it changes. Clearly this is a stamp every science nerd...er...fan will want to have. You can get them at your post office or by mail through: https://store.usps.com/store/

   If you have not planned for the eclipse yet, now is the time to start thinking about where you will be on Monday, Aug. 21 and how you and your family or colleagues will observe the eclipse. In the video, I explain what is happening and give suggestions for safe viewing techniques. (Remember, any time any part of the Sun is showing, it's not safe to look at with just your eyes or sunglasses.)

   Thanks to grants from the Moore Foundation and Google, three astronomy colleagues and I were able to distribute 2 million safe eclipse-viewing glasses to public libraries nationwide. Check with your library to see if they are participating. The free booklet for libraries can be downloaded by anyone at: http://www.starnetlibraries.org/EclipseGuide/ 

The 'All-American' Eclipse of th

Happy One Year Pre-Anniversary of the All-American Eclipse of the Sun

August 21 is exactly one year before the 2017 eclipse of the Sun which will sweep across one country and one country only -- the US. On a Monday morning (Aug. 21, 2017) this "All-American" eclipse (as it's being called) will begin on a beach in Oregon and cross the country diagonally to end in the afternoon on a beach in South Carolina.  See the map below.

The eclipse will be total (moon covering the Sun completely) only in a path about 60 miles wide and we expect huge crowds and traffic jams in that zone. The rest of North America (500 million people) will see a partial eclipse, with a big bite taken out of the Sun. Special eclipse glasses or ways of projecting an image of the Sun will be needed to see the partial eclipse safely.

The full story,in everyday language, with a map and times for major cities, and safe viewing guidance, can be found in a free 8-page excerpt from a book, called Solar Science, that Dennis Schatz and I wrote for teachers. It is at: http://bit.ly/2bkGSvA

There is a national committee that I serve on trying to arrange a good experience with the eclipse for as many people as possible. Wish us luck! Dennis and i are also working with science teachers, libraries, and science and nature museums to become centers of eclipse information for their communities.

I'll say more about preparations for the eclipse on this page as the year goes on. But for now, you may want to note the date and if you have friends or relatives in the total eclipse zone, be extra nice to them starting now.

And thanks to Prof. Tyler Nordgren of the University of the Redlands for permission to use his cool poster.

Map of the 2017 Total Eclipse Path

For those of you who are teachers, or who know a teacher, we will be doing a webinar on how to prepare yourself and your students for the eclipse.  For more see:

http://bit.ly/2bbAwfo

The Longest Eclipse Ever Found

This past week there was a beautiful total eclipse of our Sun visible for a few minutes from Indonesia, so it’s a good time to be thinking about all kinds of eclipses. A team of astronomers from several universities recently reported the discovery of a star that is eclipsed for more than 3 years every 69 years. This is the record holder for eclipses anywhere in the universe so far!

What would eclipse a star for such a long period of time? It can’t be a moon, or a planet, or another star, since all of those are too small to cause an eclipse that lasts three and a half years. There must be something around the star that extends over a much larger area and gets in the way of its light as seen from Earth.

After a lot of careful investigation -- using both recent observations by professional and amateur astronomers, and images going back over the last century -- the team concluded that they were seeing two aging stars whirling around each other in 69 years. One of the stars has lost a good deal of its material as it aged, and this lost material now forms a huge disk or doughnut around the emaciated star. It is this large disk that gets in front of the other star and cuts out its light as seen from our viewing angle.

We have seen other systems where such disks cause long eclipses. The best known case is the star Epsilon Aurigae, whose eclipses last about 700 days and happen every 27 years. It too has been studied by large teams of astronomers to uncover its secrets. 

But our star (which has no name, only a long catalog number TYC-2505-672-1) is further away and its eclipses take much longer to repeat. The only way astronomers were able to figure out that it has a 69-year cycle is because they were able to consult a hundred-year repository of pictures of the sky that has been lovingly kept up at the Harvard College Observatory.  

Those old images, many of them made on glass plates back in the days of chemical photography, are a treasure for astronomers. They are now being “digitized” – made into digital images that can be scanned and tracked via computer.

So if astronomers want to know if something interesting (like our eclipse) might have happened to a star sometime in the last century, they can now look up on the Harvard images what that star has been doing all that time. As someone who has trouble throwing out old files or magazines, my heart leapt when I heard about how important the old records were to the discovery!

And how far does stripped star with its disk of dark material have to be from the other star to only have an eclipse every 69 years? Their separation must be more than 20 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, roughly the distance between the Sun and Uranus.

(The image shows an artist's impression of the dark disk moving in front of a red giant star.)

*****

By the way, to see a nice animation of the dark eclipse spot from the Indonesia eclipse on Earth, go to: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Solar_eclipse_of_2016_March_9#/media/File:An_EPIC_Eclipse.gif

A Total Eclipse of the Moon Sunday Evening September 27

I thought you might like advance notice of a very nice upcoming lunar eclipse visible next Sunday evening in North and South America and in the early morning in Europe and parts of Africa and west Asia. Below are the basics in the form of questions and answers.  All you need to enjoy the eclipse is clear skies and (on the American west coast) an unobstructed view toward the East.

Next week you will start reading media reports about this being both a “blood moon” and a “supermoon,” but don’t pay too much attention to that.  The Moon will be a bit closer to the Earth in its orbit than average, making it look a bit bigger, but the difference is not especially significant.  And every lunar eclipse could turn reddish, as explained below.  It’s rarely the color of blood, but the media love anything that can be connected to thoughts of violence.

The Sept. 27, 2015 Total Eclipse of the Moon

1. What Is Happening?

On Sunday evening Sept. 27, a total eclipse of the Moon will be visible from throughout the U.S. (and North and South America.) In a lunar eclipse, the full Moon & the Sun are exactly opposite each other in our sky, and the Earth gets between them. This means the Earth’s shadow falls on the full Moon, darkening it.  It’s a nicely democratic event; no special equipment is needed to see it (provided it’s not cloudy or foggy.) Plus it happens early in the evening; kids can watch & still be awake for school next day.

2. When Will the Eclipse Happen?

The table below is for the U.S. (for other countries and continents, see: http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2015-september-28  which can be set for your home location.) 

Event	Pacific	Mountain	Central	Eastern
Partial eclipse starts	Moon not up	7:07 pm	8:07 pm	9:07 pm
Total eclipse starts	7:11 pm	8:11 pm	9:11 pm	10:11 pm
Total eclipse ends	8:23 pm	9:23 pm	10:23 pm	11:23 pm
Partial eclipse ends	9:27 pm	10:27 pm	11:27 pm	12:27 am

As Earth’s shadow slowly moves across the Moon, we first see only part of the Moon darkening (partial eclipse).  When our shadow completely covers the Moon, we see a total eclipse. The best time to start watching is about a 20 minutes before total eclipse begins, when much of the Moon is already darkened. 

NOTE: On the west coast, the eclipse will start low in the Eastern sky, so make sure your observing location has an unobstructed view toward the Eastern horizon.

3. What is Visible During a Lunar Eclipse?

As the shadow of the Earth covers the Moon, note that our natural satellite doesn’t become completely dark.  Some sunlight bent through the Earth’s atmosphere still reaches the shadowed Moon and gives it a dull brown or reddish glow.  The exact color of the glow and its darkness depend in part on the “sooty-ness” of our atmosphere – how recently volcanoes have gone off and how much cloud cover, storm activity, and human pollution there is around the globe. 

Once the Moon is totally eclipsed, the stars in the sky should become more easy to see.  What makes this eclipse a little bit unusual is that, by coincidence, it is happening just one hour after the Moon has reached the closest point in its monthly orbit around the Earth.  So the Moon will look a bit larger in the sky than usual.  (The media will be calling it a “supermoon,” but the effect is pretty subtle for the average person.)

4. Is it Safe to Watch, and How do I Watch?

Since the Moon is safe to look at, and eclipses make the Moon darker, there’s no danger in watching the eclipse with your eyes or a telescope.  (The dangerous eclipse is the solar one, where it is the Sun that gets covered.) And lunar eclipses don’t require you to go to a dark location.  Bring binoculars to see the Moon larger, but just your eyes are fine.  Since the total eclipse will last for an hour and 12 minutes, be sure to take someone along with whom you like to spend time in the dark!

5. What Can I Tell My Kids (or Kid Brother or Sister)?

Suggest that they take a careful look at the shadow of the Earth as it moves across the bright face of the Moon.  What shape is it?  The round shape of the Earth's shadow suggested to the ancient Greeks, more than 2000 years ago, that the Earth’s shape must be round too.  Eclipse after eclipse, they saw that the Earth cast a round shadow, and deduced that we lived on a round planet (long before we had pictures of it from space.)

A Comet Passes by Mars; An Eclipse of the Sun

 

On Thursday afternoon, Oct. 23, there will be a partial eclipse of the Sun, visible from the U.S. Different amounts of the Sun's area will be covered by the Sun. (For example, 40% of the Sun will be covered from the San Francisco region.) I have put question-and-answer introductions to the eclipse at: http://www.astrosociety.org/society-news/2014-eclipse-fact-sheets/

You can consult the national sheet for the degree the Sun will be eclipsed in your area. Here's wishing everyone clear skies. And please remember, do NOT look at the Sun without proper protection. Follow the instructions on the sheets or go to an astronomy place (observatory, college, planetarium) near you to join an eclipse viewing session.

This Sunday, Oct. 19th, a comet will pass closer to Mars, than any comet has passed to the Earth in recorded history. Comet Siding Spring (named after the observatory where it was discovered) will pass within only 87,000 miles of Mars. An armada of telescopes near Mars and Earth will try to get a good glimpse of it. From its orbit, this appears to be what you might call a "virgin" comet, making its first entry to the inner solar system. It is coming from the distant reservoir of ancient "icy chunks" that surround our solar system in a giant cloud.

A comet is just such an icy chunk that comes close enough to the Sun so that the Sun's energy and wind begin to evaporate the ice and loosen the dust frozen inside it for billions of years. These comets thus contain some of the original material from which our solar system was formed some 5 billion years ago. 

To learn more about NASA's plans for observing this Mars visitor, see: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/09oct_cometprep/

For a while, NASA scientists worried that dust from the comet may damage some of the spacecraft around Mars, but recent calculations are showing that the path the comet is taking means that its dust is not likely to pose a serious threat.  But we'll see Sunday.  Perhaps there will be faint "shooting stars" (dust burning up in the thin atmosphere) on Mars.

HBO is Showing "Einstein and Eddington" Now

In 2008, the BBC made a biopic (or dramatization) of events in Albert Einstein's and Arthur Eddington's life and work, and how they intersected. It was cosponsored by HBO and I just found out that HBO is currently showing this film (you can see it in the "On Demand" section of your cable TV offerings if you subscribe to HBO.) It may not last long, and it is not available on DVD yet in the U.S.

I recommend it with some enthusiasm (it's moving, and fun to watch), but also many reservations (the science and history are not always accurate, or -- to be charitable -- are twisted or changed in the interests of higher drama.)

I think everyone has heard of Einstein, but Arthur Eddington was an astronomer and physicist in England in the early part of the 20th century who contributed a lot to our understanding of how stars work. He was also a key member of the eclipse expedition in 1919 that tested if Einstein's crazy new theory of gravity, space, and time -- the general theory of relativity -- was correct. Measurements during that eclipse, and especially during a later eclipse made by a team from the Lick Observatory, established that Einstein was right and that the universe was more complex and beautiful in its inner workings than earlier scientists had imagined.

The film begins and ends around the eclipse expedition, but then goes back in time to set the scene. Many historical details are wrong or skipped over -- Elsa was divorced with two kids when she re-encountered Einstein in Berlin, the famous image of Einstein sticking out his tongue was later in his life, Eddington didn't have to tell Einstein about Mercury, etc. But such details don't matter to most viewers, and sometimes mixing things up a bit helps move the story along. And the flavor of the excitement around relativity is well characterized, with the two main actors doing a nice job in portraying the scientists and their personalities.

If you get HBO, or have a friend who does, and have a chance to see it, I recommend the film for everyone except historians of 20th century science, who will have a fit about those details. (The same production team also did a biopic about Stephen Hawking, called just "Hawking" and I gather you can find that film in segments on YouTube.)

Above you see the two scientists as portrayed in the movie, below you see the two of them from real life.
(For movie and TV fans, I can't resist adding: Gollum plays Einstein, Dr. Who plays Eddington.)

What Would the Lunar Eclipse Have Looked Like from the Moon?

We who live in North or South America (and had clear skies,) experienced a total eclipse of the Moon Tuesday morning, April 15.  But what would the eclipse have looked like to someone on the Moon?

First, since the Moon always keeps one side toward the Earth and one side away from the Earth, we have to pick a side. For this purpose, the interesting side of the Moon is the one that was facing the Earth and the Sun. It was sunny and bright on that side of the Moon before the eclipse began. Then, an observer on the Moon would have seen the Earth move in front of the Sun, and darkness descend. It would have gotten colder too without the warmth of the Sun.

Since the nearby Earth looks bigger from the Moon that the Sun does, the Earth more than covered the Sun. Still, the Earth's atmosphere bends some of the sunlight behind it toward the Moon. So someone on the Moon would have seen a faint ring of light around the dark Earth. (If you had a telescope on the Moon, you might also have seen the lights of big cities and large fires on the night side of our planet.)

How do we know that this "Moon perspective" about the eclipse is right? A Japanese spacecraft called Kaguya captured just this kind of image during a lunar eclipse in February 2009, as it was orbiting the Moon. In the picture above (courtesy of the Japanese Space Agency), you see several views of the Earth from the Moon during the eclipse. The ring of light is not complete, because some part of Earth was below the Moon's horizon as seen by Kaguya. At the end of the eclipse, you can see the first light of the Sun coming out from behind the Earth, making a kind of diamond ring effect. How wonderful that our robot spacecraft can give us views in the solar system that earlier scientists could only imagine!