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November 28th, 2012 Penumbral Lunar Eclipse

This last Moon eclipse in 2012 -and last major astronomical event for this year- is a penumbral one, the November 28th, 2012 penumbral lunar eclipse. There is a penumbral lunar eclipse occurring when the Moon, instead of being attained by the Earth's umbra, the darker of the Earth's shadow, is just affected, at the opposite, by the Earth's penumbra, the lighter part of the shadow. From the Moon, there would be a partial solar eclipse only anywhere on the Moon. A penumbral Moon eclipse is less spectacular than a total or partial one, as the dimming of the Moon may be harder to observe. for more about Moon eclipses, theoretically, see our tutorial: 'Moon Eclipses'

That time, Moon is passing in the southern part of Earth's penumbra and our satellite mostly totally immerged into, with will make it easily visible like a dusky shading in the concerned halve of the Moon. The whole of the eclipse is observable from most of India, central Russia, Australia and New Zealand to northeasternmost North America, through the eastern Pacific Ocean. Almost North America -the eastern shores excepted- has the eclipse interrupted by Moonset as most of Europe, eastern parts of Africa and the Middle East have the eclipse already encours at Moonrise. Central and South America and eastern parts of Africa -including Portugal and eastern Spain- do not have any eclipse at all

The eclipse's main data are the following (data as of November 2011, F. Espenak, NASA/GSFC). 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): -0.1872
- penumbral magnitude (fraction of Moon's diameter immersed in the penumbra at greatest): 0.9155
- greatest eclipse: 14:33:00.0 UT
- eclipse duration (penumbral): 04h36m05s
- eclipse contacts (in UT): P1 (penumbral eclipse begins) at 12:14:58, P4 (penumbral eclipse ends) at 16:51:02. No U contacts which concern a partial, or total lunar eclipse only

see a .PDF map for the November 28th, 2012 Penumbral Lunar Eclipse (path of the Moon within the Earth's umbra and map of the visibility of the eclipse worldwide) (a smaller .gif version is also available). map courtesy Fred Espenak - NASA/GSFC

. for more about this eclipse and for more about solar and lunar eclipses generally, you may see at Fred Espenak's NASA's eclipse website