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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse (photos and video)

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse. Photo by fincher69 on flickr

The December 2010 lunar eclipse occurred from 5:27 to 11:06 UTC on December 21, coinciding with the date of the December solstice. It was visible in its entirety as a total lunar eclipse in North and South America, Iceland and northern Scandinavia.

The eclipse of December 2010 was the first total lunar eclipse in almost three years, since the February 2008 lunar eclipse.

It is the second of two lunar eclipses in 2010. The first was a partial lunar eclipse on June 26, 2010.

The eclipse was the first total lunar eclipse to occur on the day of the Northern Winter Solstice (Southern Summer Solstice) since 1638, and only the second in the Common Era.

Source: wiki

Photo gallery:

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 21: A total lunar eclipse occurs as the full moon is shadowed by the Earth on December 21, 2010 in New York City. The lunar eclipse was visible during the early morning hours in North and Central America, revealing what seemed to onlookers as an eerie reddish glow on the moon. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

Video:

Time lapse video of Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse on December 21, 2010 from 1:10 AM EST (6:10 GMT) to 5:03 AM EST (10:03 GMT) from Gainesville Florida. Music is Claude Debussy Nocturnes: Sirènes.

Huge smiley face on the Sun

Scientists have discovered and photographed a giant smiley face on the Sun. The images were obtained with the help of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite.

“A smiley approximately 600,000 kilometers long and a pair of eyes 200,000 kilometers in diameter are formed by the magnetic fields of the Sun. Black areas are fields with negative polarity and the whites are those with positive polarity. The Sun’s ‘irises’ are four times bigger then the Earth – you can really drown in those eyes,” says a report from the institute’s Laboratory of X-Ray Astronomy of the Sun.