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February 21st, 2008 Total Lunar Eclipse

This first Moon eclipse for 2008 is an average, total one, as it's mostly observable over most of the Atlantic regions. The conditions of the eclipse makes that the Moon is passing through the southern part of the Earth's umbra, as the Moon southern parts thus will be lighter than the parts deeper into the umbra, at the moment of the eclipse's greatest. At the moment of the greatest of the eclipse, Moon’s northern limb passes 7.2 arc-minutes south of the shadow’s central axis and the southern limb is lying 3.3 arc-minutes from the southern edge of the umbra and 38.4 arc-minutes from the shadow centre. A total lunar eclipse if a fine show worth the observation, giving a deep sense of the astronomical scales of the Universe and the large events which may occur there. The whole show will last a long 5h and 45 minute long! for more about Moon eclipses, theoretically, see our tutorial: Moon Eclipses

The whole of the eclipse is observable from eastern Germany to before the Rocky Mountains in the USA (before still in Canada) as the whole of Central America (the western part of Mexico excluded) and the whole of Southern America has the entire eclipse too. The whole eclipse too is visible from West Africa, from about Annaba, Algeria, to Togo). A large part of Eurasia, from Austria and Italy to Siberia, western Mongolia and easten India are having the eclipse by moonset, that is that the eclipse is interrupted by moonset, as the western parts of Northern America, Alaska, the Bering regions of Russia, and a large part of the Pacific Ocean have the eclipse already en cours by moonrise. Such regions and countries like eastern Siberia, most of Mongolia, most of China, Japan, Koreas, South East Asia, Bengladesh, Burma, Australia, and New Zealand don't see any eclipse at all

The eclipse's main data are the following (data as of beginning of November 2007). for more about how to observe a lunar eclipse, see our tutorial "Observing a Moon Eclipse":
- umbral magnitude (fraction of Moon's diameter immersed in the umbra at greatest): 1.1110
- greatest eclipse: 3:48:27.4 UT
- eclipse semi-duration (penumbral): 2h 51m 09s
- eclipse semi-duration (umbral): 1h 43m 04s
- total eclipse duration: 0h 25m 29s
- eclipse contacts (in UT): P1 at 00:34:59, U1 at 01:42:59, U2 at 03:00:34, U3 at 03:51:32, U4 at 05:09:07, P4 at 06:17:16

see a map of the February 21st, 2008 total lunar eclipse (path of the Moon within the Earth's umbra and map of the visibility of the eclipse worldwide) (48 ko). map courtesy Fred Espenak - NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, site NASA Eclipse Home Page

. for more about this eclipse and for more about solar and lunar eclipses generally, see Fred Espenak's NASA Eclipse Home Page, NASA/GSFC

Observation Reports: in France, our observation post was overcast, and no observation possibility thus. From the available sources, one may say that this February 21st, 2008 total lunar eclipse was relatively dark, with, however, a form of strong luminosity on the southern side of the Moon -and even there a sort of blue tint