http://www.flickr.com/photos/carichanley/6486764861/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carichanley/6486887713/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carichanley/6486888171/in/photostream

After reading the explanation of the illusion of a bigger moon on the horizon than that higher in the sky, I was a little confused. So, being the visual learner I am, I took a look at the comic illustrating the illusion; it now makes much more sense. It is quite amazing how perspective can cause such a great difference in the way we visually and cognitively interpret something, even though we KNOW the illusion to be false. In order to get an even better understanding of the Ponzo Illusion, I plan to also read “Why does the Moon look so huge on the horizon?”.

It’s not ready yet, but in the mean time, the first 4 images in this Flickr set show the eclipse close-up, and my setup:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/suraky/sets/72157623056052482/with/6487231121/

Spent all morning seeing shapes in horrendously dark and light grey enveloping tall walllike clouds both to the west and to the east. Not a natures hint was allowed save 5 fleeting minutes of glimpses at the very start after which the coming of the seemingly invisible wall of cloud shaped like a donut over our valley took its confining form. Quite perfectly concealing.

Can’t win em all

Maybe I was being a bit subjective but I always did like a play on words and sure why not MTU! Clear skies in Washington State and Western Australia mate! Happy natural wonder hunting. May the clouds resist their duty just long enough.
Cheers.

Cheers!

Don’t know how the skies were over Westralia. Alas, I needed the skies to be clear over the Adelaide hills – & they weren’t.

I got the odd glimpse of the eclipse of this lunar eclipse but only the odd glimpse for a few seconds through slight holes in the fast-moving clouds. Sigh.

@41. David : December 10th, 2011 at 5:43 pm

I have a question about the speed of light. Is this the right forum?

Well, it is slightly off topic for this particular thread but that’s okay, I don’t mind & doubt anyone else would. I’d would also recommend asking that question on the BAUT (Bad Astronomy Universe Today) forum as an alternative forum for that as that’s pretty good for such questions but I’ll see what I can do for ya here as well.

186000 miles per second, right? what if the miles are moving?

Well, a mile is an unit of distance that should remain constant I’d say -can’t why it would chaneg unless you switch from miles to nautical miles or suchlike as your arbitrary measuring unit – although as an Aussie I’m, more used to the metric kilometres instead!

Wikipedia, that usual & only slightly unreliable fount of all wisdom, has this linked to my name here :

The speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by c, is a physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its value is 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact since the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time.[1] In imperial units this speed is approximately 186,282 miles per second.

I’ll stress the “in a vacuum” bit there as light will travel at different speeds through other mediums, eg. solid matter, liquid and plasmas – it apparently may take millions of years for a photon (particle – ray) of light to escape the solar core!

Hope that helps.

The speed of light is the same for all observers. This implies that time runs at different rates for different people, length can shorten, and mass can increase. Space, time, length, and mass are not constants, but the speed of light is a constant.

Earth-surface miles are not static relative to other celestial objects. The implication is that the known physical laws may be relative to earth gravity but not other graveties. Is this a correct assumption?

[If you want to see the information, here's the link: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=81&month=12&year=1988&obj=moon&afl=-11&day=1 ]

My aunt and uncle joined me later when 2/3 was covered. Then my uncle and I watched the last sliver of it as the moon set. It was still above a tree when totality occurred.

This was the first lunar eclipse I recall seeing at sunrise.

Still haven’t seen a solar eclipse…..

As #23 notes, Phil makes yet another appearance in SMBC today. Be sure to hover over the votey button. Or maybe not, I’m going to have a hard time erasing the image from my mind!

Beautiful, well worth freezing my @## off.

Unfortunately, I’m impatient and don’t want to wait til the next one

Fortunately, I’m currently watching via SLOOH. Not quite the same, but it comes with commentary at least, and two of the telescope feeds are from my own country too.