The central total lunar eclipse image above, entitled “Lunar Eclipse Mid-Totality 2010,” was taken along with all of the additional support images on the evening of December 21, 2010 from Conifer, CO with a Nikon D5000 camera at prime focus of a Celestron C-8 telescope optically reduced to f/6.3. I have included it here as a montage that depicts the various stages of a total lunar eclipse. Other specifics of this sort of event were discussed in my 2011 Christmas card narrative originally included with this image and linked here to my general photographic website. I have also copied this "rant" to "The Imperative of Night" page on this website.

A total lunar eclipse displays (albeit with some subtlety) the spherical nature of Earth, as the Earth's curved shadow is projected into space as the Moon moves through it. If you look carefully at (especially) the edge of the shadow in the black-and-white image to the right of the image of totality, you'll see the curvature. Just from this observation and some thought, an ancient human could conceivably ascertain that the world he or she was on was round. Essentially then, without fancy mathematics or a complete understanding of the physics of our solar system and our local worlds (Earth and Moon), the Earth was very likely thought by some (many, many centuries B.C.) to be round (a sphere) long before mariners plied the oceans in the late 1400's (A.D.)

 

 

[copyright Rabbit Valley Observatory/Willis Greiner, 2015 -- all rights reserved]