1. Introduction
Most amateur astronomers like to promote their particular interests in Astronomy and I am no exception. I would firstly like to explain the creation of my * Lunar Eclipse Finder and then spend a little time on the published paper which appears in the NACAA Proceedings on Pages 10-20.
2. History
The observation of Lunar Eclipses was promoted by several methods, one was at our NACAAs, and in 1978 at the 8th NACAA in Canberra I had the help of 21 very enthusiastic observers to record crater timings from the total lunar eclipse on easter Friday March 24. This gave the project a good start and with David Herald's help robust algorithms for the Hewlett Packard calculator were developed followed later by my DOS computer programs.
It is stimulating to experience a lunar eclipse and here is the 1978 September 16 eclipse at totality by Nick Loveday.
SLIDES A, B and C.****
The continuing saga of lunar eclipse observations and analysis was ably reported by John Perdrix in many issues of the Australian Journal of Astronomy, commencing in October 1986 to the last edition released dated March 1997.
show example copy.****
Overseas interest from Europe and South America increased as can be seen in the 1981 July 17 partial eclipse photographs by Jaci Monteiro taken in Rio de Janeiro.
SLIDES D & E. ********
Two technical papers were published in the Journal of the BAA one in 1984 and the other in 1990. As a result, in 1991 Fred Espenak provided me with his Cannon of Eclipses for Solar and Lunar events, Jean Meeus provided manuscripts and helpful comments on my analytical methods, Wilhelm Nijenhuis supplied the best-fit-ellipse mathematics for oblateness of the umbra, Henk Bulder also of the Netherlands sent the first overseas video recording of the lunar eclipse of 1990 Feb 9 for image analysis (used as a logo for my LEO page) and the first of six editions of my Lunar Eclipse Observer was issued to participating astronomers in May 1992.
show example copies.**
The search for the oblateness of the umbra concentrated on data reduced from crater timings (about 7,500 to this time) and umbral enlargement, but following my first video recording of the 1989 Feb 20 total eclipse, work began on the image analysis method.
A commercial software package proved to be the best for measuring the topocentric umbral geometry (Automatix Inc, Massachusetts, Image Analyst Revision 8 for the Macintosh).
While normal correspondence with many interested astronomers gave life to the project, timely transmission of data was difficult so in 1995, the intricacies of hyper-text markup language, or HTML were studied and the first Lunar Eclipse Observer Home Page was born using the netspeed Networks Internet service provider in Canberra.
I planned to observe the 1995 April 15 partial eclipse from the newly established Calwell Lunar Observatory shown here
SLIDES F, G & H.*
But initially it was very disappointing to be totally clouded out in Canberra for this eclipse. However, as I had listed the circumstances and crater timing predictions for this event on the home page I was astounded at the response and thanks to those observers and others, this eclipse was another success.
Since then all lunar eclipses have been listed on the web page including the three 1998 penumbrals, and many observers continue to contribute crater timings and images for the project.
In 1997 September 16 after placing the lunar eclipse animations on the Internet, an incredible 55,000 "hits" in one day were recorded from interested readers (this is more than most fans at a rugby league match, or equal to the capacity of the Colosseum in ancient Rome !). The web page maintains a link to my ISPs Home Page statistics showing that the page receives 16,000 (around the time of the 1998 Feb 26 total SOLAR eclipse) to a fairly consistent 500 hits PER DAY.
I think you will agree that promotion of lunar eclipse observation is well served by my * Lunar Eclipse Finder
Now just a couple of recent developments, then I will give a brief overview of the paper.
3. Recent Developments
National Library of Australia
A National Library of Australia project called Preserving & Accessing Networked DOcumentary Resources of Australia at * PANDORA has sought permission to archive the Home Page on a policy set by their Selection Committee on Online Australian Publications (SCOAP):
An extract from their Guidelines for the Selection of Online Australian Publications Intended for Preservation by the National Library reads:
5.3 Organisational and personal sites
Organisational and personal sites ('home pages') are selected on a very limited basis. In the case of organisational sites, those that provide substantial information about functions, projects, research, etc may be selected. Those that provide the kind of summary information available in an annual report should not be selected. Personal sites (or 'home pages') will usually only be selected if they provide information of outstanding research value unavailable elsewhere.
I promised to mention an associated new PURL Resolver Service that the ANL are now offering. PURLs (Permanent URLs) assist in the provision of continued access to Internet publications and allow you to manage access to your World Wide Web documents as they are moved on your system. When a document's location is changed, anyone pointing to your document's PURL will always find it, provided you maintain the PURL by changing the associated URL. ANL encourage Internet publishers to make use of this free service. More information about the service is available on the Library's server at * PURL
[I used ID: lunar, password: (eclipse), e-mail address, but on search nothing was found as yet, but last Wednesday advice was received that archiving is about to commence].
U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department Data Online.
I have placed a link to the * USNO On-line page at the top of my Lunar Eclipse FINDER page, and this should relieve me of providing visibility of the moon to many of the individual e-mail enquires. I have used my AltAz computer program and more recently Maris Redshift software, to give details of each eclipse to any query. Only once was I accused of not having such information on-line (this was too difficult for me even after starting to study Java), but now the USNO "Lunar Eclipse Computer" link provides this for any location (we have to use FORM B).
4. The Paper
The paper is produced in the Proceedings by our friends at Quasar Publishing and special thanks goes to Peter Northfield for doing such a good job.
Here are a few 35 mm slides concerning my paper. It can be viewed in FULL on a PC at one of the Poster/Workshops concerning New Generation Amateur Astronomy (Computing).
SLIDE 1: The Lunar Eclipse FINDER home page, since updated. Each image provides a link to my pages on the web as well as the listed external pages.
SLIDE 2: The jump.to/lunar-eclipse title page, note the raster it looks a lot better on the www page.
SLIDE 3: The first images in the two animations of the "live" 1997 Sep 16 eclipse, these can be seen as true animations on the www.
SLIDE 4: The moon just before eclipse from the web page at 12h 33m 55s (UT) some 4 hours before first penumbral contact, using the 400 mm telephoto lens/SONY Handycam CCD colour video recorder - [comment on the vignetting]
SLIDE 5: Another early image of the moon before eclipse from the Mintron high resolution CCD camera without a time base using the 40 mm Unitron telescope.
SLIDE 6: The equatorially mounted instruments, top the SONY Handycam and below the Unitron/Mintron.
SLIDE 7: Again the instruments image, from my "new" (second hand) Power Macintosh 6100/66 DOS Compatible computer.
SLIDE 8: The measurement of the best fit circle at the 151 Gray level of the imaged umbra, using the calibrated lunar limb for the exact measure of the topocentric umbral circle.
SLIDE 9: A graph of the computed topocentric umbra, the incidence angle, the measured umbral radii and its change from the expected topocentric value where the mean slope increases from 0.25 to 0.35 degrees of arc over the time observed, from 17.7 to 19.2 hours UT.
SLIDE 10: A graph of the oblateness of the umbra from the reduction of crater timings by Elizabeth and Robert Price showing a mean oblateness of 1/65. (The Geoid value is 1/298.3, my mean observed value is 1/102).
SLIDE 11: The web page access data from my ISP for the eclipse of 1997 September 16, over 55,000 on eclipse "day".
SLIDE 12: The original Home Page which lists all of the pages which can be accessed including lunar surface imaging and eclipse analyses with external links. The logos are the original and the animation from 1997 September.
SLIDE 13: Some awards received for the early pages when first placed on the world wide web.
SLIDE 14: A link to Fred Espenak's page showing the 1998 August 8 penumbral eclipse circumstances.
SLIDE 15 (LAST): Fred Espenak's lunar eclipse visibility map for the second penumbral eclipse of 1998 in August.
The third penumbral eclipse for 1998 will be visible in Australia in the early evening of September 6 - see the * Lunar Eclipse Finder for FULL details.
Thank you.