Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Friday, December 9th.  The sun will rise at 8:07.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 55 minutes, setting at 5:02, the earliest sunset of the year.   The moon, 1 day before full, will set at 8:08 tomorrow morning.

There will be an eclipse of the moon tomorrow,  however we will get a chance to spot the very beginning of the partial phase.  The eclipse will be best seen in the western United States, Australia and most of Asia.  The partial phase starts at 7:46 a.m. with the moon low in the west northwest.  The sun will rise about the time the moon will set.  That will occur at 8:09 a.m., give or take a few minutes depending where you are in northern Michigan.  It will have to be really crystal clear to see this at all. Next year we’ll see the tail end of an eclipse of the sun as it sets on May 20th.  And we’ll see partial eclipse of the moon on June 4th.    The next evening we’ll have the rare transit of Venus which won’t reoccur for over 100 years.

* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.

Addendum

More Information here: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OHfigures/OH2011-Fig06.pdf

Update

Lunar Eclipse at 8 a.m. December 10, 2011. Created using Stellarium.