Archive
02/27/2017 – Ephemeris – The Great American Eclipse, August 21, 2017
Ephemeris for Monday, February 27th. The Sun will rise at 7:22. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 5 minutes, setting at 6:28. The Moon, 1 day past new, will set at 7:52 this evening.
We didn’t get a chance to see yesterday’s annular eclipse of the Sun, since it occurred mostly in the South Atlantic Ocean. But it’s a wake up call for those of us who chase the Moon’s shadow, that the Great American Eclipse is a bit less than 6 months away. August 21st to be exact. Here in northern Michigan the Sun will be 75% or so covered by the Moon at peak. For me it’s 100% or nothing. The path where the Sun will be totally eclipsed will run from Oregon to South Carolina. I’ve seen totality four times from 1963 to 1979 and accumulated 8 ½ minutes of time basking under the shade of the Moon. Well not basking, for those were hectic magical times, not to be missed. And come hell or high water I will strive to add another 2 plus minutes to that total.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
A screen cap of the map showing the path of totality of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse from NASA’s eclipse page. Credit: NASA and Google Maps.
NASA’s Eclipse page: https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/
10/07/2016 – Ephemeris – Busy astronomical weekend in Traverse City
Ephemeris for Friday, October 7th. The Sun will rise at 7:48. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 22 minutes, setting at 7:11. The Moon, 2 days before first quarter, will set at 11:30 this evening.
This is another busy weekend for the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society. Tonight there will be a general meeting of the society at 8 p.m. followed by a star party at 9 p.m. at Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory, located on Birmley Road south of Traverse City, to which all are welcome. The featured speaker for the meeting will be Randy Leach presenting Astrophotography for the Average Guy. Photographing the sky without spending big bucks. Tomorrow evening members of the society will be on the north side of the 200 block of East Front street in Traverse City with their telescopes for the International Observe the Moon Night. We’ll start at 7 p.m. if it’s clear.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Substitute speaker: Yours truly: Personal recollections of 4 total solar eclipses and a look ahead at next year’s eclipse.
03/08/2016 – Ephemeris – View tonight’s total solar eclipse on the Internet
Ephemeris for Tuesday, March 8th. The Sun will rise at 7:07. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 33 minutes, setting at 6:40. The Moon is new today, and won’t be visible.
Today’s new moon has a bonus, it will produce a total solar eclipse. Not for us, but for Indonesia, some islands of Micronesia, and across the Pacific Ocean. We do have a shot at seeing it, however. NASA and the The Exploratorium has sent an expedition to the Woleai Atoll near the point of the greatest eclipse, allowing over 4 minutes of totality. So if it’s clear there NASA and the Exploratorium will have Web and TV feeds. There will be two feeds, An educational feed running from 8 to 9 p.m. covering the heart of the eclipse and a telescope only feed covering the entire eclipse running from 7 to 10:15 p.m. For NASA TV go to NASA.gov and click on NASA TV. The other place to go is exploratorium.edu and you can’t miss it.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Eclipse chart for the March 9, 2016 total solar eclipse. Credit NASA/GSFC/Fred Espenak.
These are my photographs from prior eclipses that will give one feel as to what an eclipse looks like. The corona will be visible the whole time of totality. The diamond ring and Baily’s Beads will be visible for only a few seconds at the end of totality. They are generally not seen as totality starts because filters will stay on the equipment until totality actually starts.
The solar corona displayed during the July 10, 1072 total solar eclipse from Prince Edward Island. Credit Bob Moler.
Diamond ring at the end of totality of the total solar eclipse July 10, 1972. Credit Bob Moler.
Baily’s Beads at the end of totality of the March 7, 1970 total solar eclipse from Bladenboro, NC. Credit: Bob Moler.
09/22/2015 – Ephemeris – Equinox tomorrow and September 27th Moon’s triple whammy
Ephemeris for Tuesday, September 22nd. The Sun will rise at 7:29. It’ll be up for 12 hours and 11 minutes, setting at 7:40. The Moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 2:02 tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow at 4:20 a.m. before most of us wake up summer will officially end and Autumn will start. That’s the exact time of the autumnal equinox. We are noticing that the days or rather daylight hours are getting noticeably shorter day by day. Autumn will end when the days will stop getting shorter on the first day of winter, December 21st. The full moon this Sunday is triply important. Most important is that a total lunar eclipse will happen. Second, it is the Harvest Moon, the nearest full moon to the autumnal equinox, more on that next week. Also it is the closest the Moon gets to the Earth all year. Yup it’s a so-called supermoon. If the Moon were a 2 inch ball it would be 20 feet from an 8 inch Earth. The supermoon is a foot closer.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
That last bit about the Moon being a two-inch ball will come in handy if you come to the Girl Scout Badge Bash at ECCO in Traverse City Thursday night.
09/11/2015 – Ephemeris – Astronomy from the dark skies of the Sleeping Bear Dunes this Saturday
Ephemeris for Friday, September 11th. The Sun will rise at 7:16. It’ll be up for 12 hours and 44 minutes, setting at 8:01. The Moon, 2 days before new, will rise at 6:39 tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow night will be the next to the last Star Party at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore of the year. It will be at the Dune Climb in the Parking lot nearest to the dunes. Featured will be the wonders of the Milky Way including globular and galactic star clusters and planetary and emission nebulae. The event starts at 9 p.m. We are entering the second eclipse season of the year.
On Sunday there will be a partial solar eclipse visible from South Africa, the Southern Ocean and part of Antarctica. Eclipses occur in no less a grouping than pairs, solar and lunar, the next eclipse is 16 days away. It will be total lunar eclipse visible from here on Sunday evening the 27th. In the week after next I’ll tell you all about it.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Star Party at the Dunes Overlook. Credit: Eileen Carlisle. I still don’t have a good picture of a star party at the Dune Climb where the dune rises up and blocks the lower 20º of the western sky.
Partial Solar Eclipse of September 13, 2-15. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Fred Espenak.
04/03/2015 – Ephemeris – Learn about meteorites tonight
Ephemeris for Good Friday, Friday, April 3rd. The Sun will rise at 7:20. It’ll be up for 12 hours and 52 minutes, setting at 8:12. The Moon, 1 day before full, will set at 7:24 tomorrow morning.
Meteorites will be the topic given by Joe Brooks local meteorite expert and collector at this evening’s meeting of the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society at 8 p.m. at Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory. He even has a meteorite that’s pretty much been proven to be from the asteroid Vesta. Today we are all too aware that stones and even bigger asteroids can collide with the earth. Everyone is welcome. Also at 9 p.m. there will be a star party at the observatory. The observatory is located south of Traverse City on Birmley Road between Garfield and Keystone roads. Remember also the partial lunar eclipse tomorrow morning starting at 6:15 a.m. The society and the observatory will not hold an event for it.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
If you missed yesterday’s post about tomorrow morning’s lunar eclipse, click here.
04/02/2015 – Ephemeris – Information on Saturday morning’s lunar eclipse
Ephemeris for Thursday, April 2nd. The Sun will rise at 7:22. It’ll be up for 12 hours and 49 minutes, setting at 8:11. The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 6:56 tomorrow morning.
Saturday morning we will be able to witness the start of a lunar eclipse. This is the third of four consecutive total lunar eclipses visible from parts of North America. The last and best of them will occur on the evening of September 27th. The totality of Saturday’s eclipse will only last under 5 minutes, but even that will not be visible from here. The partial phase will begin at 6:15 a.m. with the Moon low in the west-southwest. The Moon will progress about half way into the Earth’s shadow by the time it sets at 7:24 a.m. This will be shortly after the 7:17 a.m. sunrise. It is possible to see the eclipse in its entirety via the Internet. Search for Griffith Observatory. The will have a live feed of the eclipse if it’s clear in Los Angeles.
Update: The URL for the LiveStream from Griffith Observatory is http://new.livestream.com/GriffithObservatoryTV/LunarEclipseApril2015
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum:
This is an annotated clip of the NASA Eclipse diagram. Click on it to show the entire pdf file.
In the interval P1 to U1 and U4 to P4 the Moon will be only in the Earth’s penumbra, where the Sun’s light is only partially blocked. However for about a half hour before U1 and after U4 the Moon’s edge closest to the umbra will appear dusky.
03/31/2015 – Ephemeris – Previewing April skies
Ephemeris for Tuesday, March 31st. The Sun will rise at 7:25. It’ll be up for 12 hours and 42 minutes, setting at 8:08. The Moon, half way from first quarter to full, will set at 6:02 tomorrow morning.
The 4th month of the year begins tomorrow. Daylight hours in the Interlochen/Traverse City area and will increase from 12 hours and 45 minutes tomorrow to 14 hours 11 minutes on the 30th. The altitude, or angle, of the sun above the southern horizon at local noon will be 50 degrees tomorrow and will ascend to 60 degrees on the 30th. The altitude of the Sun in the Straits area will be a degree lower. The actual time of local apparent noon this month for the Interlochen/Traverse City area, when the sun passes due south, will be about 1:43 p.m. For the straits area local noon occurs about 4 minutes earlier. This Saturday morning we’ll see the first part of a lunar eclipse. This month Venus and Jupiter are our evening planets.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Star Chart for April 2015. Created using my LookingUp program.
The Moon is not plotted. The planets and stars are plotted for the 15th at 10 p.m. EDT. That is chart time.
Evening Astronomical twilight ends at 9:51 p.m. EDT on April 1st, increasing to 10:42 p.m. EDT on the 30th.
Morning astronomical twilight starts at 5:43 a.m. EDT on April 1st, and decreasing to 4:41 a.m. EDT on the 30th.
Add a half hour to the chart time every week before the 15th and subtract and hour for every week after the 15th.
For a list of constellation names to go with the abbreviations click here.
The green pointer from the Big Dipper is:
- Pointer stars at the front of the bowl of the Big Dipper point to Polaris the North Star.
- Drill a hole in the bowl of the Big Dipper and the water will drip on the back of Leo the Lion.
- Follow the arc of the Big Dipper’s handle to Arcturus
- Continue with a spike to Spica
Calendar of Planetary Events
Credit: Sky Events Calendar by Fred Espenak and Sumit Dutta (NASA’s GSFC)
To generate your own calendar go to http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SKYCAL/SKYCAL.html
Times are Eastern Daylight Time on a 24 hour clock. Some additions made to aid clarity.
Conjunctions like the Moon-Saturn: 2.3° S means Saturn will appear 2.3° south of the Moon.
| Apr | 01 | We | Venus: 36.6° E | |
| 01 | We | 08:59 | Moon Apogee: 406000 km | |
| 03 | Fr | 23:17 | Moon Ascending Node | |
| 04 | Sa | 08:01 | Partial Lunar Eclipse* | |
| 04 | Sa | 08:06 | Full Moon | |
| 06 | Mo | 09:48 | Uranus Conjunction | |
| 08 | We | 09:08 | Moon-Saturn: 2.3° S | |
| 08 | We | 10:16 | Jupiter-Beehive: 5.4° S | |
| 09 | Th | 23:52 | Mercury Superior Conj. | |
| 10 | Fr | 03:46 | Moon South Dec.: 18.2° S | |
| 11 | Sa | 11:30 | Venus-Pleiades: 2.6° S | |
| 11 | Sa | 23:44 | Last Quarter | |
| 16 | Th | 23:53 | Moon Perigee: 361000 km | |
| 17 | Fr | 09:07 | Moon Descending Node | |
| 18 | Sa | 14:57 | New Moon | |
| 21 | Tu | 12:35 | Moon-Aldebaran: 0.9° S | |
| 21 | Tu | 14:09 | Moon-Venus: 6.8° N | |
| 22 | We | 19:21 | Lyrid Shower: ZHR = 20 | |
| 22 | We | 19:26 | Moon North Dec.: 18.3° N | |
| 25 | Sa | 19:55 | First Quarter | |
| 28 | Tu | 23:55 | Moon Apogee: 405100 km | |
| 30 | Th | 21:29 | Mercury-Pleiades: 1.7° S | |
* For the Grand Traverse area the partial phase of the eclipse will begin at 6:15 a.m. The eclipse will be interrupted by the moon setting at 7:24 a.m. Sunrise will occur at 7:17 a.m. More information will be provided in the Thursday, April 2nd post.
10/09/2014 – Ephemeris – The next lunar eclipses and recollections of what happened with yesterday’s eclipse
Ephemeris for Thursday, October 9th. The sun will rise at 7:50. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 18 minutes, setting at 7:08. The moon, 1 day past full, will rise at 8:01 this evening.
With the two total lunar eclipses done for this year, we can look forward to two more next year. The April 4th, 2015 eclipse won’t appear total here because the moon will set before totality. However the September 28th, 2015 lunar eclipse will be an evening eclipse. These 4 eclipses make a rare tetrad of total lunar eclipses that won’t be repeated until 2032 and 2033. After September 28th the next total lunar eclipse visible from northern Michigan will be in 2021. On the solar eclipse side there’s one on the 23rd of this month, a partial eclipse at sunset. I’ll have more on that later. After that is the big event, the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. The path of totality will run from coast to coast, running just south of St. Louis Missouri, and just north of Nashville Tennessee.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
What follows is my recollection of the October 8th lunar eclipse. Originally relayed in an email to Pat Stinson, freelance writer and author of the wonderful article in the Grand Traverse Insider about the activities of Space Week and the astronomical events in October:
The skies were trending clearer at midnight and again at 2:30 a.m. when I took a shower to prepare for the eclipse. After that it got slowly worse. That afternoon Ranger Marie Scott of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore said she’d go to our site, Platte River Point, clouds or not, and I was willing. In setting up the eclipse observing sites,earlier in the year, this site was the one place that if it were clear, we could see either the moon or the sun set onto the Lake Michigan horizon for the three eclipses this year. I loaded my van with my two telescopes, the C8 and an 11″ Dobsonian and lots of coffee.
I got to the site at 4:30 and began to set up. Marie arrived a few minutes later and another Grand Traverse Astronomical Society member Don Flegel arrived shortly after that. They had some rain in Kingsley, where he lived that morning. We had a strong, cold northwest wind. When we’re at the Point we commandeer the small parking lot to the north of the road that’s up against a hill. That hill and my van offered some protection from the wind. I got the C8 set up just in time to spot the moon emerging from the clouds a few minutes after first contact. We were able to follow the eclipse intermittently until about 5:45 when a large cloud covered the moon big time. We could see the glint of the moon off the water until after totality.
This was our situation until about 7:30 when the clouds began to break up, By then the moon was so low that the foreshortened breaks weren’t all that open. Then about 10 minutes before moon set it did peek out at intervals. Unlike the Cheshire Cat’s smile, the moon (cat) had a frown because the upper edge of the moon was coming back into sunlight. 5 minutes later the moon finally disappeared for good in a cloud bank as the puffy clouds overhead caught the sun’s golden sunrise rays.
Marie Scott counted 18 folks that at one time or another came out to witness the event. Marie also posted some pictures she took of the eclipse on the park’s Facebook page.
10/07/2014 – Ephemereis – One more day: Tomorrow’s total lunar eclipse
Note: Being a radio program, I do have to repeat the eclipse timings a couple of times.
Ephemeris for Tuesday, October 7th. The sun will rise at 7:47. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 24 minutes, setting at 7:12. The moon, 1 day before full, will set at 7:56 tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow’s Total Lunar Eclipse will be visible without losing too much sleep. Just set the alarm clock so you’ll be ready to view the start of the eclipse at 5:15 a.m. That’s when the partial phase starts when the upper left edge of the moon enters the Earth’s inner shadow called the umbra. The total phase or totality starts at 6:25 with morning twilight just beginning. The middle of the eclipse will occur at 6:54. Totality will end at 7:24 when twilight will be bright. The ending partial phase will not be completely visible from northern Michigan. From the Dakotas and westward the entire ending partial phase will be visible. Amazingly, next year we will have two more total lunar eclipses in the United States, April 4th and September 28th.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Click on the image above to display or download a more detailed Adobe Acrobat (PDF) image showing more information about the eclipse. The time shown will be Universal Time (UT). Subtract 4 hours for EDT, 5 hours for CDT, etc.
In the Grand Traverse area there are two locations the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society (GTAS) will be set up to view the eclipse if it is clear enough. Opens at 5 a.m.
- Northwestern Michigan College’s Joseph H. Rogers Observatory. located south of Traverse City on Birmley Road, between Garfield and Keystone roads. (One road south of Hammond)
- Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore at Platte River Point. It’s in several miles from the Platte River Campground off M22 on Lake Michigan Rd. Park in the big parking lot to the left. The GTAS will have their scopes in the small parking lot to the right.
If it’s cloudy, there is a place to view the lunar eclipse on the Internet from Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. There will probably be more locations. I’ll put them up if and when I find them. Last eclipse, it was cloudy here, so I watched the eclipse Livestream from Griffith Observatory. They also have a running commentary and answer your questions. Though it still wasn’t as good as seeing it with your own eyeballs. Videos cannot duplicate the range of brightness and color that can be seen with your own eyes.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 