Daily Archives: January 8, 2018

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Total Eclipse of the Moon of 2018 Jan. 31
Delta T: 69.7s

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Location: W 95°38’00.0″, N39°04’00.0″, 200m
(Longitude referred to Greenwich meridian)

Moon’s Position
UT1 Altitude Azimuth Angle
d h m ° ° °
Moon enters penumbra 31 10:49.8 29.1 268.5 89.3
Moon enters umbra 31 11:48.1 18.1 277.0 83.2
Moon enters totality 31 12:51.4 6.4 286.0 241.1
Maximum Eclipse 31 13:29.8 -0.4 291.6 10.4
Moonset 31 13:32 —- 292.0 —–

Penumbral Duration: 2h 42.6m
Umbral Duration: 1h 44.2m
Duration of Totality: 0h 41.0m
Magnitude: 1.321

Hi Readers…… Thanks for coming by for a read.

A while back I came across a vintage Meade 114mm EQ telescope still in the box, evidently never having been out of it.   Just the sort of thing I dreamed about down on Gale’s meadow down in Texas.    But now it’s here in my apartment complete with a multitude of eye-pieces, a motor drive, moon filters, and a complete lunar eclipse coming at me January 31.

I’ll confess to your I find it mildly annoying that a blue moon doesn’t have a dadgummed thing to do with the visual aspects …… it just means it’s the second full moon in a calendar month, which doesn’t happen all that often.   And while I’m being mildly annoyed moon-wise, I might as well wring it out further and say, what’s the deal with calling four total eclipses in a row a Blood Moon?   How unspectacular is that, anyway?   Blood moon Blue Moon and all we get is just another plain old ordinary full lunar eclipse.

Yawn.

But you have to admit there have been a number of really good songs about blue moons….. Sinatra, Billie Holliday, the Marcels, Ella Fitzgerald, Elvis, Dean Martin, Jo Stafford, Greta Keller, Ritchie Valens, and even Sam Cooke sang about it.    So whatever it lacks in spectacular out-of-the-ordinary-eclipse visuals, you have to admit there’s plenty of fine background music.

I don’t know about you, but if I can stay awake and if it isn’t too frigid I’m going to be looking at that blue moon this time around.    And maybe have myself a little concert of dead singers harmonizing about it so’s I won’t forget how special it is.

Thanks for the visit.

Old Jules