AMATEUR ASTRONOMY:

THE LUNAR ECLIPSE IN WINNIPEG:

This is a more or less "live blog" of the progress of the lunar eclipse here in Winnipeg. As predicted earlier today the viewing conditions are, in my opinion, excellent. At about 6:45 pm I could see a cloud bank way off in the west, but it is unlikely to get anywhere near east enough to interfer with viewing tonight. As I write this (8:20 pm) the partial eclipse has so far covered about 50% of the Moon's surface, and it now entirely covers the Oceanus Procellarum (search this blog under 'Moon' for descriptions of various major lunar

features). There are about 38 minutes left to go until totality begins. It is still too early to judge how this eclipse will come out on the Danjon Scale, but what I see so far makes me hazard a guess that it will come out as either L2 or L3 (see previous "lunar eclipse" posts for an aexplnation of this scale).