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The eclipse of March 4, 2007 | HOME | PHOTOS | ANIMATIONS | MEASUREMENTS |
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The eclipse of March 4, 2007 | HOME | PHOTOS | ANIMATIONS | MEASUREMENTS |
PHOTOS : personal pictures taken during the night of the eclipse.
ANIMATIONS : Eclipse animations in different reference frames
MEASUREMENTS : Direct measures on the photos to find the diameter of the Moon and the distance between
the Moon and the Earth .
| When the Sun, the Earth and the Moon are aligned in this order, there is a moon eclipse. The shade of the Earth is a cone of shadow of point angle 0.5° and length = 114 times the diameter of the Earth. The Moon does not pass in this cone of shadow to each revolution because its orbit is 5.14° inclined with the plan of the ecliptic (Earth-sun) see an animation of moon orbit (new window) |
The shadow of the Earth is not perfectly black. When the light passes through the Earth's atmosphere, red radiations are more diffused and deviated than the blue radiations which are absorbed by the atmosphere. We can observe on this photograph that the further we are from the edge of the shadow, the redder the moon appears . |
