Sunday, September 27, 2015

The lunar eclipse of September 28, 2015 Where to watch and why it scares engineers NASA – BBC

Residents of Central Russia, which on Monday did not have to rush to work, may witness a rare and beautiful phenomenon. That night in the world can observe a total lunar eclipse – a phenomenon that last inhabitants of this part of the country could see four years ago –15 June 2011.

This eclipse will be repeated every Saros (repetition period eclipses, constituting 6585 days) total lunar eclipse of 1997.

At the time of total lunar eclipse the Moon does not completely disappear from the sky, and will acquire a deep red color. This is due to the fact that, even when fully closed from direct sunlight the Earth, the Moon will continue weakly illuminating tangential to the earth’s surface in the atmosphere of our planet. Due to the fact that the earth’s atmosphere best transmits the red-orange part of the spectrum, the surface of the moon takes on a reddish hue.

The eclipse, which will see the morning of Monday, has several features.

Vo First, the full moon coincides with Supermoon – a term which came into use only in recent years. The moon revolves around the Earth is not round robin, but slightly elongated, elliptical orbit, and at the time of the eclipse will be in perigee – the closest point to Earth. In the current 2015 it will be the closest to the Earth position of the Moon – 357,877 km.

Last time Supermoon coincided with a full lunar eclipse in 1982, the next time this will happen only in 2033-m, so the current phenomenon is indeed rare.

The difference in angular size of the moon in perigee and apogee is only 5%, and the human eye is not able to notice a difference. However, on this night, before the rising of the sun disk of the Moon still will seem larger than usual.

This is the second feature of the current eclipse – the low height of the Moon above the horizon.

In these cases, take the moon causes the increased number of well-known illusion that makes the moon and sun appear to be visually more if they are near the horizon and distant objects. The only manifestation Supermoon, which can be seen on Earth – significantly increasing the value of the tides on the day of a full moon and during the next three days.

Start Private lunar eclipse in Moscow will be in 4.06 MSK at a height above the horizon of 18 degrees.

Full Moon in Earth’s shadow plunged into MSK 5.10 an hour over a total eclipse, the Moon comes out of the earth’s shadow. Almost immediately after that Moon in Moscow go down over the horizon – this will happen in 6.31 MSK.

«His contribution in view of the eclipse will and the low position of the moon above the horizon, and related to this state of atmospheric flows that will give the illusion the motion of the lunar disk in the Earth’s atmosphere. Do not miss this interesting phenomenon, waking up several hours earlier than usual! »- advise astronomer Alexander Kozlovsky.

In the traditionally intensified to eclipse predictors of doomsday that night, scientists are advised not to pay attention , but NASA engineers eclipse can add real hassle.

The fact is that the Earth will plunge into the shadow not only illuminated part of the moon,

and American research probe Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), powered by solar energy.

Not every spacecraft is able to survive a sharp de-energizing and cooling. The device LRO has already gone through three lunar eclipses in the past 17 months, and scientists are confident that he will cope with this.

«We have a method, and it works well, – said the head of the mission planning Don Myers. – We always stress – the approach of the eclipse, but we follow the same procedure every time, and we had no problems ».

Initially, these procedures consisted of turning off the electrical systems in order to save battery power. However, over the years (the device was launched in 2009), scientists have become less reinsured. For example, during the last eclipse, they deliberately left on the radiometer Diviner, measures the temperature of the lunar surface, which, when the eclipse could fall sharply to 156 degrees Celsius.

«The sharp cooling of the surface during an eclipse gives us an idea as of cooled in different ways the top few centimeters of the surface compared to the conventional lunar day. From this we can learn about the size of particles on the surface “, – said Noah Petro of mission.

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