A total lunar eclipse took place on June 15, 2011. This was a relatively rare central lunar eclipse, in which the center point of Earth's shadow passes across the Moon.
The eclipse was visible all over Europe and in several other parts of the world. The path of the lunar eclipse is shown bellow.
Pictures have been taken all over Europe. We present you some of them bellow. Fortunately, this time the weather has cooperated with all interested observers. The eclipse schedule also allowed children all over Europe to observe the eclipse with their parents.
This eclipse was the first of two such eclipses in 2011. The second will occur on December 10, 2011.
Europe woke up on January 4th waiting for the announced total eclipse. Though some good images could be acquired by making pictures of the eclipse, in most of the places the Sun couldn't be seen due to clouds in the sky.
Here we present some images about the solar eclipse in different places around Europe.
In Ireland, according to Deirdre Kelleghan, EAAE's Irish National Representative, on January 4th a fantastic sunrise greeted the families and individuals who turned up at the South Beach Greystones Co Wicklow at 08:30 hours. The solar disc was already partially eclipsed as it rose over the sea in-between thin gray cloud slivers. Some of the St Cronan’s boys arrived with their parents to see this phenomenon.
In December 2010, Project Moonwalkers challenged people to make a report or take pictures or make drawings or poems about the Lunar Eclipse that occured late night of December 20th or early in the morning of December 21st depending on the location on Earth. This eclipse's maximum occured at 08h17min (UTC) which means it was early in the morning in Europe. The map bellow shows how the eclipse was seen all over the World.
The following scheme shows how the various stages of the eclipse were seen by observers that had the luck to have favorable weather conditions for the observation of the phenomena.
For almost four centuries a total lunar eclipse hasn't coincided with the December solstice, called the Winter Solstice in Northern Hemisphere and Summer Solstice in Southern Hemisphere. If weather conditions allowed a clear view of the sky Western Europe could see the first stages of the eclipse before moonset. On the rest of the world people from North America, Greenland and Iceland could see the entire event, and western Asia and Australia got the end of the eclipse after moonrise.
Many beautiful images were posted on the Internet by many lucky astronomers that had the weather cooperating with them.
In the majority of European countries where there was a possibility of seeing the eclipse the bad weather made it impossible to be seen. This was my case. As shown bellow in Faro, Algarve, Portugal, where it usually never rains, it was very cloudy and occasionally raining at the time the eclipse might have been seen.
Luckily, this was not general. Some images can already be found on the Internet about the event in Europe. For instance Stu Atkinson has described his experience viewing this eclipse in the UK on his blog.
Some people didn't have photographic settings to make picture with their telescope so they just made a sketch. This was the case of Ted Judah who saw the eclipse at California and made the beautiful sketch we present bellow.