Skywatchers in Japan treated to rare lunar eclipse that blocks Uranus

It was quite spectacular.

Of course I’m referring to the moon—not Uranus.

The moon appeared reddish because the earth’s atmosphere filtered out the sunlight of short wavelengths such as blue and purple. So said astronomers.

Makes me know we are small.

It was a clear sky/perfect weather for it.

My neighbor had a telescopic lens on her camera, she got some awesome photos of this “blood moon”.

It was a wonder to watch the progression...

A good shot, but the illumination of the tower is too bright. 

What is amazing is astronomers can calculate the exact timing of the syzygy or conjunction of the sun, Earth, the moon and Uranus, an event that will be seen again in 442 years from now.

""The next time a planet will be occulted by an eclipsed moon will be 322 years from now, in July 2344, involving Saturn, the observatory said.""

Oh beautiful Nature, Thank you for the Info. I'll write a note and leave it for my Third grand children generation to be on the lookout, Thank you.

To see a massive full moon eclipsed by the earth’s shadow in minutes was very unusual.

We went outside for a while and watched it. A very clear sky was full of stars from our darker location. I expect we will be able to view many great photos.

It was awesome !!..

I enjoyed watching the people, whose eyes were glued to the sky, as much as I did the eclipse itself.

It felt like a scene from a sci fi movie

Two weeks ago a beautiful solar elicipse in Swatti Nakshatra (Ketu in vedic culture) marking the new moon. Yesterday evening seeing this beautiful lunar elicipse in Bharani Nakshatra (Rahu in vedic culture) marking the full moon. Nakshatras are the 27 Lunar Mansions in elipitical space in Indian/vedic culture.

There is something about this photo that just does NOT look right, is it just me!?

Today  07:12 am JST

“ I didn’t even know this was going to happen and just chanced upon seeing it while out and about. “

I didn’t even know about this too; I suddenly start seeing people with their cellphones filming something in the sky: the two things that crossed my mind: a UFO or an airplane in flames; then I look and I realize that something is happening to the moon (the eclipse was still happening at this point); by the time I got home the moon “ was already gone “; meh… ( ok I’ll admit: interesting, fascinating, cool, but not as cool as a (real) UFO. )

It was nice seeing people going out to the street and kids with telescopes on the park seeing the eclipse.

A beautiful sight with perfect conditions. Only wish I had a telescope, but it was pretty cool watching the shadow creep across the moon's surface with binoculars.

It was cool.

I love celestial events like these. Reminds me how we're just in for a ride in our goldilocks planet in the vast emptiness of space. Now I kinda get why people of the olden times drink while watching the moon.

It was so nice of the meteorological agency to announce this BEFORE it happened, instead of aft... oh wait.

Great photo!

We took our youngest to a viewing by a local science museum where telescopes had been set up. On seeing the curvature of the Earth in its shadow on the Moon, I asked and was told the Earth is about four times bigger that the Moon in diameter. Since the Earth to Moon distance is trivial compared to the Earth to Sun distance, the shadow does not get particularly "magnified" or whatever the word is.

I should have but didn't ask why the Moon does not become completely dark. Is that due to refraction of sunlight through the Earth's atmosphere?

I grabbed my telescope and took the kids outside to watch it. The eclipsed red moon with Uranus peeking out from behind it at one point was an incredible sight.

If you've got kids, spending a few Yen on a decent but not expensive telescope is a good investment. We could also see Jupiter with its Galilean moons and Saturn with its rings last night.

watched from my balcony while playing Castlevania

This is great news for Uranus. It was kicked out of our solar system and lost its planet status. But everybody was talking about Uranus.

watched the whole thing. Absolutely amazing.

Parents should get their kids to watch more of real natural events and not computer games.

This is great news for Uranus. It was kicked out of our solar system and lost its planet status. But everybody was talking about Uranus.

That was Pluto actually, Uranus is still considered a planet.

I was the only person in my neighborhood who stood out in the cold to see this spectacle of sheer awesomness! maybe some people watched from their windows, but I was outside. This event also made me realise I need an updated telescope.

I wish this news feed would let us know leading up to these events. Not just after the fact.

I watched it from my balcony with my telescope. It was amazing. I didn't see Uranus, though. Then again I wasn't looking for Uranus either.

jinjapan

subscribe or use a site that does. Personally, I use

https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/japan/himeji

There are many others.

I always check the dates of a full moon.

I went out to see this eclipse having known it was coming for quite some time now. Went to a park area where a big concert was going on behind me, but there were lots of open, dark spaces for enjoying the eclipse, too. Most other people there seemed to be there for the concert itself, or for the park.

It felt like once a single person saw me just standing there watching the moon, it set off a chain reaction so that by the time I left the venue two hours later, most of the 100s of people there were just staring up at the moon! A rare event in the sky, and a rare event of comradery on earth, it was!

GodanToday  07:06 am JST

It was quite spectacular.

Of course I’m referring to the moon—not Uranus.

Astronomy is a big hobby of mine. Where I was the Moon didn't occult Uranus, but I did see that planet with a small telescope. it looked nice, non-stellar and bluish. A tiny blue orb.

rainydayToday  09:59 am JST

This is great news for Uranus. It was kicked out of our solar system and lost its planet status. But everybody was talking about Uranus.

That was Pluto actually, Uranus is still considered a planet.

Only a small percentage of the International Astronomical Union members made that Orwellian BS announcement. And the NASA New Horizons mission showed it even furthermore - it has an atmosphere, valleys, hills, craters, mountains, possible icy waters underground, 5 moons and it orbits the Sun. Even the NASA head has said it, Pluto is a planet. Let there be no doubt about it.

The volcanic ashes and soot that Tonga belched must have scattered, the Moon was dark but not as dark as it was during the May 2022 eclipse. Quite a thrill, every time!

Is Pluto a planet or not?

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a dwarf planet.

So Uranus is the final "planet".

Once should be able be a dwarf and still a planet....

So Uranus is the final "planet".

Neptune is the final planet, Uranus is second to last (in terms of distance from the sun).

Pluto is a planet. Let there be no doubt about it.

Na, I agree with the decision to downgrade it.

Yeah, it has mountains, a (tenuous) atmosphere, etc. But:

1) Its incredibly small - 1/6th the mass of our moon.

2) Its part of a wider group of similar bodies in the same region called the Kuiper Belt, and isn't even the largest of those (Eris has a larger mass).

3) it has moons, yes, but its largest, Charon, is huge relative to Pluto and they both orbit a point between the two, making them more like a binary system.

I like Pluto a lot, but its way different from the 8 planets. I think dwarf planet makes sense.

I noticed this Tuesday night. Of course, out in the country now for the last 3 months, I'm always looking up at the night sky. Saw a shooting star last week. Planets are easily spotted. Makes me wonder what the average folk wondered for the last 20,000 years before "we knew". We've come so far with the scientific revolution and yet we still love hating and killing each other. What was it Viggo Mortensen said in "The Prophecy" (1995) playing Lucifer: "Humans... and how I love you talking monkeys for this... know more about war and treachery of the spirit than any angel".

Great flick. Walken is classic as well as Gabriel.

I was awesome !!!

Sadly my iPhone XR isn't up to taking good pictures of the moon - even when visibly partial, the iPhone would extrapolate the missing bit ! :(

Thankfully, we have a Sony 6600 and that produced really good quality pictures of the blood moon, so all wasn't lost.

 like Pluto a lot, but its way different from the 8 planets. I think dwarf planet makes sense.

There are 'terrestrial' planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars), 'gas giants' (Jupiter, Saturn) , 'ice giants' (Uranus, Neptune), and 'dwarf' planets (Pluto and others beyond).

Just like a rose is a rose by any other name, so are planets. We keep finding out new info all the time and Pluto is no exception. But its funky orbit is no disqualification for anything. God/Allah/Great Spirit/Jah/Ahura Mazda/Shang-tri/Brahman/etc. designed and built this solar system and the entire universe and he doesn't have to follow our rules, does he?

I remember when I first got into astronomy the books had a very now-outdated image of our solar system. Voyager 1's mission to Jupiter was the radical start of changing all that. We're still learning and making discoveries from the Voyager 1 + 2 space probes that visited 4 different planets. And the same goes for New Horizons which visited Pluto in 2015.

Even today, with events like this where Uranus was occulted by the eclipsed Moon, scientists (at least in Japan) are studying from pictures and videos and learning even more with the findings and results from the event. The learning never stops.

Finished a month long stretch of watching The Expanse. Started it a few years ago but never got to season 3 cuz I dropped Prime. The story is a very good guess at our expansion into the solar system and human nature. The Mars colony goes all Sparta and declares independence, while the folks living in the Asteroid belt “belters” they call themselves or “skinny’s” the slur used to call them, are basically slaves to the inner solar system “inners” and resort to pirating and terrorism. It’s too bad they went cheap on the writing in Seasons 4-6, Season 5 and 6 was half unwatchable due to BS talking and required a lot of fast-forwarding.

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