Tonight’s total lunar eclipse, vis­i­ble from West­ern Europe and Africa to the Rocky Moun­tains, will be the last one until 2010. The moon will enter the Earth’s umbra at 8:43pm EST and will enter total eclipse at 10:01pm EST, where it will remain for 51 min­utes, until 10:52pm EST. The moon with then leave the Earth’s umbra at 12:09am EST on Thurs­day morning.

Total lunar eclipses last longer in total­ity than total solar eclipses because the Earth is larger than the moon, so its umbra is much larger than the moon’s, and the moon, being small, takes longer to pass through it.

For those who care about such things, my astro­labe shows the eclipse. The sun and moon hands are in a straight line through the win­dows in the eclipse hand, which shows the loca­tions on the eclip­tic of the moon’s ascend­ing and descend­ing nodes: the two times per cal­en­dar year where eclipses may occur.

I will take some lovely pho­tos and post them, for the ben­e­fit of those enjoy­ing over­cast conditions.

Update: I was going to take dig­i­tal pic­tures, but my dig­i­tal cam­era sucks for it. So I am tak­ing black and white film pic­tures with the biggest durn lens I have — a really slow 300mm zoom. I shall have to have them processed before I can post them.