Shape of the Earth's shadow

Don't forget guys, when you're talking about the shape of the totality lines here and all that, you've got a circular shadow crossing an already spherical body, so it would appear to change over the course of the crossing. It would look mor, I guess 'perfect', if the Moon was just a flat 2-D object passing into the shadow.

Seanie.

As far as I know and can imagine, the background star might shift, but the amount of eclipse visible is the same no matter where you are in the world, given a specific time.

I thought the shadow to be quite jagged, not as smooth as I expected. This is borne out in the shot below at 22:02:16.




A later shot at 22:33:17

Many thanks for putting up those shots John ... well done on getting good skies for the event.

The first picture clearly shows what I was trying to explain. The shadow does slope more gently from the right and then angles "sharply" back to the left limb.

A friend of my Dad was saying to me last night that a flock of curlews that feed in the field near his house up from the village went all quiet during totality but then began their forlorn calling again during the partial phase. A very interesting observation as I've never seen any reports before of nature going quiet during a LUNAR eclipse.

Amazing to think that there is still so much to learn about the many facets of eclipses.

All the best,

John

I have to agree John.
I have learned so much from this. Its a pity most astronomers in the
media play it down.

John....super images!

Lovely images John, out of curiosity, what made you think it would be more jagged ?