Spectacular Moonrise Possible

[Ino]

Spectacular Moonrise Possible.

This Sunday Sept. 27th the year’s biggest Supermoon (Moon is closest to Earth) will rise. Most of the nation will see a lunar eclipse. We won’t see a total eclipse here but we will be able to see a partial eclipse when the Moon rises at 6:13 pm local time. The Earth’s shadow or penumbra will still be visible until 7:23 pm local time so there should be a good possibility of an unusual color. More info here;
https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20150928_10_100

Unfortunately it looks like at this time, (weather models are conflicted) that moisture from a tropical cyclone will be approaching the area Sunday night. You might need to go up high-Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa or check the satellite and see if there are any holes in the cloud deck. Sometimes Kau desert works well. No worries if you miss this one the next one will be in 2033.

By the way although today is touted as the Fall Equinox ours isn’t really until Sept. 28th;
http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/equ...equal.html

[knieft]

Thanks, Ino, for the link. I have been trying to explain this to students and folks in general for decades, including the idea that there are two highest angle in the sky days for the sun, equidistant from the summer solstice (and the reverse for lowest in the sky) in the tropics depending on the distance from the equator.

I never could explain it well, since I only realized it when teaching in Bangkok in the 90's. I had the students construct a longhand multi-line graph of a year of sunrise, sunset, length of day, and height of sun in sky. The labored quite a while turning the list of daily data of each for Bangkok I printed from the earlier days of the Internet into a huge graph.

Of course I was telling them about how the solstices will show clearly where peaks and valleys meet of the various lunes in the graph. But as you likely know they showed more complexity than that. We all learned something.

In any case the point of the exercise came when I showed them how to take the data, copy and paste it into spreadsheet (AppleWorks, at the time), tweak a couple commands have have the software graph it. Their weeks of work turned into a pretty big group groan about all their "wasted" time. Good stuff.

I couldn't find a similar graph in my cursory searches online to show what I was talking about afterwards.

BTW, we should agree to keep this info from the solstice and Equinox celebrators, doncha think?

Well recess duty is over...off topic anyway, I guess.

Cheers,
Kirt

[TomK]

Kirt,

I understand your frustration. I've found solstices and equinoxes are much easier to explain with actual 3-d models of the solar system. Just putting numbers in spreadsheets rarely helps, and even videos don't paint the whole picture, as they are 2-d.

Have you or your school been in touch with the observatories? There's a "Journey through the Universe" program the observatories run, i.e.,

http://www.gemini.edu/journey

and much of it is aimed at local kids and schools. Given enough notice, they might be able to set something up specifically for you and your students. Drop me a line via PW if this interests you.

[knieft]

Tom,

Solstices and equinoxes aren't the trouble if I'm teaching in Wisconsin. It is the variations within the 23 degree lines of latitude that I fail to convey well. When I can't explain it to my wife, I know I am failing with upper elementary students.

Ino's link is a start but illustrates how confusing it is as much as anything...

Cheers,
Kirt

[TomK]

Obviously for most it was difficult if not impossible to see the eclipse of the supermoon this evening. It was visible from the summit of Mauna Kea despite the fog, rain and clouds. Nothing spectacular, just some captured images from the summit webcams:

CFHT cloudcam: http://goo.gl/WymsAv

Same again, minutes later: http://goo.gl/sGCcYQ

From the Kecks: http://goo.gl/UeNNfA

[opihikao]

Fantastic pictures, Mr. Tom. Mahalo. (Putting my broom away...[] No more moon for us!)

These are some pictures from the UK, and around the world:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11895052...-live.html

Have a good evening, all.

JMO.

[TomK]

Thanks, Opihikao. From the Telegraph article, this picture is superb, supermoon in partial eclipse rising over Las Vegas:

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/arch...55447b.jpg

[Ino]

Thank you posting these! I love that one from Vegas that's the one I was hoping to see.

[VancouverIslander]

We had a pretty good view from my front porch on Vancouver Island last night. I think we didn't see it until it was in the penumbra due to being low on the horizon and the sun just going down, not to mention a few trees. It looked quite similar to the images from Portugal, Boston and Paris in opihikao's link.

Just call me Mike