What time would I need to be up to see the lunar eclipse this December?

Question by : What time would I need to be up to see the lunar eclipse this December?
So I found out that on December 21 2010, there will be a visible lunar eclipse. I really wanna stay up and see it but I don't know what time the eclipse will be visible from where I live in Southern California. Does anyone know?


Best answer:
Answer by Anne MarieHi Y!

The time you'll want to look for Monday night's eclipse is 10:33 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, the moment when the partial eclipse begins.

It takes just over an hour for the earth's shadow to completely engulf the moon, which means that totality arrives at 11:41 p.m. PST and then lasts for another hour and 12 minutes.

Why are others saying December 21st when in fact it's Monday night? The official way the dates of eclipses are reckoned follows Greenwich Mean Time, the time zone of England, and this eclipse indeed happens on Tuesday morning the 21st GMT, and indeed Tuesday evening in New Zealand. In North America, though, it's Monday night, although the eclipse will run past midnight over most of the continent.

You may see some writers giving earlier times for the official start of the eclipse. They're not wrong, technically, but these earlier times are not helpful, and you will not see any eclipse until 10:33 p.m. Pacific Time.

A penumbral eclipse starts at 9:28 p.m. Monday night. A penumbral eclipse means that an observer watching from the moon would see the beginning of a partial eclipse of the sun by the earth. During a partial eclipse of the sun, the amount of light reaching the moon is slightly reduced, much as happens here when we start a partial solar eclipse.

Watching from earth, though, you won't notice anything happening during the penumbral eclipse. If you went out looking at 9:28, you'd likely just grouse that you'd been given wrong information, and disappointedly go to bed. You'll see only a normal full moon if you were to go out looking before 10:33 p.m. PST.

(Actually, if you look carefully, you may be able to notice signs of the deepening penumbral phase in the last few minutes before the start of the partial eclipse at 10:33 p.m. PST. In those last few minutes, the lower left part of the moon is only receiving a fraction of its normal sunlight. It would look to you as though the left "cheek" of the man in the moon (facing from earth) were in need of a shave. It's nothing like the start of the partial eclipse, though.)

This eclipse is shallow, as total lunar eclipses go. That means that during totality, the moon will remain a coppery red. Some total eclipses are deeper, and the moon darkens to the point where you might not even notice it if you didn't know where to look. This eclipse is not one of these.

Total eclipses of the moon occur in runs, every six months or so, usually with three or four total

Total Solar Eclipse | Solar Eclipse Information