Like John Dobson always said when you need to wake up early in the
morning: drink a glass of lemonade before you go to bed -- you need to
wake up to rotate your telescope mirror pitch lap or take it off the
mirror while making a telescope mirror. The same goes for waking up for
a predawn lunar eclipse!
Set your alarms (weather permitting for before 5 a.m. Saturday morning!
Our west coast gets a total lunar eclipse in the morning before dawn! My
video chart shows a 12 minute totality (via USNO & S&T) but depending
where you measure the deepest shadow (the umbra) some websites and most
of the media are saying less than 5 minutes (THE SHORTEST ECLIPSE OF THE
CENTURY). (caps on purpose) So I summed up the different calculation
methods here.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/whatsup-view.cfm?WUID=2026
<http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsolarsystem.nasa.gov%2Fnews%2Fwhatsup-view.cfm%3FWUID%3D2026&h=aAQFtktTs&enc=AZMhuNzfsSnCxaTRydYIL-ihC3pjEwEQB1JMzRNy1xBXCqkuq0IexxMgIu9zMOi78I7NXYETBCZEgliAqaofDvq0bVaeoANkjclYicZOsrsf6IrFs4IVvrNIskzQ6FQohhbyPNmeW1uNbaqVVO2q4OTPzhgm7xhT3Fdq3pvX5pX7eg&s=1>
Regardless, get your butt out of bed before 5am PT if you can. Totality
is a few minutes before 5 am until a few minutes after 5 am. Pacific.
Training for August 2017!
Video of the eclipse and Whats Up for April: lots!
https://youtu.be/WaTqzp43UI4
Hope we see it!
--
Jane Houston Jones
@jhjones @CassiniSaturn @NASAInsight
What's Up? April 4th lunar eclipse
https://youtu.be/WaTqzp43UI4