Penumbral Lunar Eclipse In Cambodia

Partial Lunar Eclipse, April 26, 2013
Last night, while most here in Cambodia were sleeping, and those of you in North or South America were awake, but without a moon in your sky, I was up at 3 am photographing the third-shortest partial lunar eclipse in the 21st century.

The Earth’s dark umbral shadow barely clipped last night’s full moon for 27 minutes, causing a portion of the moon to disappear under darkness.  This event was not as exciting as the annular solar eclipse I photographed last year, but it was still a beautiful event.

I did my best to explain to my Cambodian friends this lunar eclipse was going to happen. Most could not understand what I was talking about, and no one was interested in getting up a 3 am with me to see what ever I was talking about. There is a Khmer word for eclipse. I had to it up in the dictionary. Today when showed the word around, many people had not heard of the word. Most misinterpreted it as a new moon. So I have had several impromptu science lessons today with mixed results.


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *