Lunar eclipse 2011

The next and last Lunar Eclipse 2011 will be on December 10.

The eclipse will be visible from Most of the world but the whole vent will be visible from Asia and Australia. Europe will miss the beginning of the Eclipse while North America will see just the beginning of it. South America and Africa are left out this time. Sorry. The total time of full eclipse is 51 minutes and since it is not very centric eclipse (The moon does not pass through the center of earth shadow) there are high chances of a lovely red moon.

Time table of the Eclipses

• Penumbral Eclipse Begins: 11:33:32 UT 
• Partial Eclipse Begins:   12:45:42 UT 
• Total Eclipse Begins:     14:06:16 UT 
• Greatest Eclipse:         14:31:49 UT 
• Total Eclipse Ends:       14:57:24 UT 
• Partial Eclipse Ends:     16:17:58 UT 
• Penumbral Eclipse Ends:   17:30:00 UT

 The map of the eclipse:

Lunar Eclipse 2011

Venus transit links

More information on the Venus transit can be found in the following sites:

• Heavens and Earth
• General information about the transit - http://www.transitofvenus.org/
•  An interesting site with lots of historical information http://transitofvenus.nl/wp/

Venus occultation

A Venus occultation is another type of celestial event which is similar to a Venus transit. In an occultation, the moon passes in front of Venus (or any other planet or star) and hides it. The moon appears to be much larger than Venus, of course and the occultation lasts about an hour, which is the time it takes the moon to move half a degree in the sky (The apparent size of the moon is about half a degree or 30 arc-minutes).

Both the transit and the occultation happens as all objects, Moon, Earth and Venus, are more or less on the same plane. If they were exactly on the same plane these events (and all other type of eclipses as well) would occur much more frequently.

The following video is a combination of several hundreds of photos which show a Venus occultation from 2007.
The next Venus occultation will be in 13-14 August 2012, and visible from many places on Earth.

Here are some photos as well

Venus just after the occultation

Partial Solar Eclipse

Last Friday (15/01) there was a partial solar eclipse. The moon passed between the earth and the sun, partially hiding it.
Warning: Observing the Sun requires special equipment. It is dangerous to observe the Sun directly. Read the safety instructions from NASA.

There are three types of eclipse:

• Total eclipse - occurs when the Sun is completely obscured by the Moon. During any one eclipse, totality is visible only from, at most, a narrow route on the surface of the Earth, while all other observers will see a partial eclipse.
• Annular eclipse - occurs when the Sun and Moon are exactly in line, but the apparent size of the Moon is smaller than that of the Sun. Hence the Sun appears as a very bright ring, or annulus, surrounding the outline of the Moon. Also in this type of eclipse, the Annular eclipse can be seen from a very narrow strip on Earth.
• Partial eclipse - occurs when the Sun and Moon are not exactly in line and the Moon only partially obscures the Sun. This phenomenon can usually be seen from a large part of the Earth outside of the track of an annular or total eclipse

Friday morning started with lots of clouds which made me worried that we would not see anything. The older children went to school equipped with special filters suitable for safe solar viewing and instructions how to use them and show the eclipse to others. Me and another kid stayed and waited on our roof.
About 7:50am we were able to see the sun through some cracks in the clouds. We saw the sun for about a minute and even took some pictures of it which came out surrealistic. We were very happy that we managed to see the eclipse at all.


Then the clouds got thicker so I sent my kid to kindergarten and I continued to wait. At some point I managed to steal another peek through the clouds but it was hard to maintain and was for a very short amount of time.

At 8:30am the sky suddenly became completely clean of clouds and we could finally watch the eclipse properly. The eclipse was at its end and well after the peak (Which was very small, about 20% of the sun was covered. Such low coverage will not cause any noticeable reduction in brightness or temperature. Coverage of over 60 percent will make us feel a drop of several degrees and less brightness).
We took better pictures, too. Pay attention to the sun spots in the top of the picture. Sunspots are colder regions (500 degrees less than normal) on the surface of the sun and radiate less light, and in relation to their surroundings they look black. Actually, the light they radiate is 50 times stronger than the light of the full moon, which reminds us again how in life and especially in the universe, everything is relative.

A better eclipse (with 60% Sun coverage at the peak), will occur in the next Hebrew year (4-Jan-11),on 28 Tevet 5761 (Notice that it will be two days before the new moon of Sh'vat due to the rules of the Hebrew Calendar).