The Earth “ate” the moon

On Saturday (2011 December 10th), many parts of the world, including Japan, could see a 月食 (full lunar eclipse).

A lunar eclipse occurs when the sun, earth and moon are all aligned in a straight line causing the moon to be completely hidden by the shadow cast by the earth.

In Japanese, it’s called 「月食」 (“Gesshoku“). The written characters could be literally translated to “Eaten moon” (hence my title for this post).

Before the moon was completely covered in the earth's shadow, some of the sun's reflected light caused the moon to appear red. (The picture was taken in Tokyo).

This photo shows the earth's shadow beginning to cover the moon. (Tokyo Tower is in the foreground).

Were you able to see the lunar eclipse where you live?

(The two photos in this post were found on Google Images. My camera’s not powerful enough to take such close-up shots of the moon.)

日食

As I mentioned in an earlier post (click here to read it), there was a 日食 (solar eclipse) visible from Japan today.

Unfortunately, it was an overcast day (with light rain in the morning), so the eclipse wasn’t easily visible. I wasn’t able to see it at all. But I saw on the TV news this evening that many people with “eclipse glasses” waited for the clouds to part…which they did a little bit before the eclipse ended, so they were able to get a view of the eclipsed sun.

日食 (solar eclipse) over Tokyo

Today’s 日食 (solar eclipse) was a 100% eclipse visible from southern Japan. From Tokyo, it was about 70%.

The TV news said that the next time that a partial eclipse will be visible from Japan won’t occur for another 26 years. And the next time that a full eclipse will be seen in Japan won’t be for about 300 years!
So today’s eclipse was something special!

It’s gonna snow?

This winter it hasn’t snowed at all in Tokyo yet.

It usually snows once or twice every winter. Not too much…usually just enough to turn the ground white, and it melts away in a day or two.
(I seem to recall that it used to snowed more heavily and more frequently in Tokyo when I first got here in 1990. Is my memory off…or has global warming changed Tokyo’s winters?)

Anyways…it’s forecast to snow in Tokyo for two days next week. On Tuesday, March 3 and Wednesday, March 4.

There’s an 80% probability of rain for today, then cloudy tomorrow, Sunday and Monday are supposed to be mostly sunny…then the snow on Tuesday and Wednesday…followed by a cloudy day next Thursday.

Do you like snow?
Personally, I don’t care for it much. Actually I like Spring and Summer much more than Winter!

Tokyo's weather forecast for February 27 - March 5, 2009.