Eclipses

 

  

 

The picture above was taken by Mr Cripps from Norfolk at 1.15am when the Moon passed into the shadow of the Earth on 8th November 2003.    The red colour is caused by sunlight being dispersed by the Earth's atmosphere, the same way as sunsets are red.

Earth's cone-shaped shadow and the moon's path through it on Nov. 8th and 9th, 2003.

Graphic explaining the lunar eclipse courtesy of NASA

On May 31st 2003 year 8 pupil Tom B took this image of the partial solar eclipse from Norfolk

Cartoon image of the SunAnimation of solar eclipse.

Graphic explaining the solar eclipse courtesy of NASA GSFC

The planets Mercury and Venus can both pass beteen the Sun and the Earth but they are so far away that they are only able to block a tiny amount of the Sunlight.   The event is called a transit and they are quite rare. 

The last transit of Mercury was on May 7th 2003 and was captured by Year 7 pupil Nathan using an ETX 70 with a white-light solar filter and a Casio QV3500 digital Camera. Mercury is the upper left dot.  The larger more central dot is a sunspot.   On June 8th 2004 Venus will do a transit.  No living person has ever seen one.