Starry Nights @ SFU: February 2008 Lunar Eclipse!

Starry Nights @ SFU: Blogs & Pics - Lunar Eclipse February 20 2008!

High-resolution copies of selected celestial images are available for download from these blogs,
and print nicely on inexpensive photo paper with a basic colour or B&W printer.

Lunar Eclipse Watch of February 20 2008

We had a very successful viewing of the total lunar eclipse tonight! A group of about 30 people gathered on the east side of the Academic Quadrangle to view the eclipse, thanks to all those who came, including several families with young children, and many new guests.

Thanks especially to SFU students Gwen Eadie and Aaron Springford, who brought their 8" Dobsonian and home-made 3" refractor, and to Milos Perovic, who kept the physics department's cumbersome binoculars trained on the Moon throughout the eclipse.

We were fortunate that the clouds opened up in time for the total eclipse. During totality the Moon was richly textured, with red hues contrasting nicely with the darker regions of the umbra. The skies stayed clear long enough for us to witness 3rd contact (the end of totality), with time to view the curved umbral shadow marching across the Moon's disk for awhile before the sky clouded over again around 8:30PM. I would rate the eclipse as close to "3" on the zero-four Danjon Luminosity Scale used by astronomers, on the high-end for eclipse beauty! [3 is for a brick-red eclipse, with a bright rim to the umbral shadow, according to a very informative pamphlet on lunar eclipses from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - BTW, the Vancouver chapter of the RASC is well worth a visit!]

We also saw Saturn and its rings, and several of its moons (notably Titan) through the department's 8" scope.

The only hitch for me tonight was that I did not succeed in taking any images of the eclipse, though I did take one of some starry nighters who showed up early, pictured above (click the image to download a high-resolution copy). I'd love to hear from anyone who took images of the eclipse, I'll post them here, with credit!

Starry-eyed
@ SFU since Nov. 2007