9/17: Eclipse from space
 

http://cellar.org/pictures/eclipse99.jpg

What does an eclipse look like </i>from the other side?</i> If it's a lunar eclipse, it looks like this, where the big dark spot over Europe is actually a shadow of the moon.

This image, along with other nifty satellite images that might be future IotDs, are at the Dundee Satellite Receiving Station .

A lunar eclipse is when the Earth is between the Sun and Moon, projecting its shadow onto the Moon.

A solar eclipse is what this picture shows, when the Moon is between the Sun and Earth, projecting its shadow onto the Earth.

What's interesting to see from this picture is the totality of the eclipse, with 100% totality being somewhere in northern Italy, and probably around 50% totality in France. One of my goals in life is to be able to witness at least 2 phenomona in astronomy, a total solar eclipse and an aurora borealis. I've been planning to take a vacation somewhere in north Alaska for years. A friend of mine there says he gets the northern lights about every 4 days.

-Cyc

Ugh. You're right, my bad.

When the sun's magnetic poles swap every 11 years, then sunspot activity is so high as to create large Auroras. Had you been outside of urban environments, you would have seen some this summer that were even seen as south as San Diego. This summer was recoreded the largests sunspot expulsions to date (I think it was sunspot 9515). Details were posted in The Cellar somewhere around June. Of course history does not help your ambition - especially that now you must wait 11 years - or travel.

I have a color pic taken from MIR of an eclipse that I use as wallpaper.

http://cellar.org/pictures/eclipse99b.jpg

Hey, that's a better image than mine, but the only thing about yours is that I can't tell what part of the earth it's over.

apparently it's over the cloudy part ;)

I couldn't tell you, but since the file is "eclipse99" I think all you have to do is find out where there was a total eclipse in 1999.

BTW, can you imbed this image IN the message? I couldn't figure out a way to do that without putting the message on the web elsewhere.

I've done that now

The pic *I* had was ALSO named "eclipse99". So there ya go.

BTW, if anyone wants it, I have a higher res version, that I can post/email, it makes a better version for wallpaper.

yes please!
ICQ: 32202356
ocelet@dingoblue.net.au

Ha! I found the original:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ima...ipse99_mir.jpg

You can get the full-size version here

This is from the Astronomy Picture of the Day, which has some pretty cool pix. The specific page that this picture came from is here.

with that better image, it looks like it's right over asia. I think that's the mediteranian just above the left half of the shadow. So that would be africa to the left and the persian gulf in the bottom left. hard to be sure though.