Penumbral Lunar Eclipse 10-11/02/2017

A Lunar Penumbral Eclipse took place from Friday 10 to Saturday 11 of February. It lasted 4 hours and 19 minutes.

Lunar eclipses are celestial phenomena visible from a wide geographical area. There are different types of them: the most impressive are the Total ones, with the Moon completely covered by the shadow of the Earth taking a reddish hue; a little bit less spectacular are the Partial ones which take place when the Moon enters only partly in the shadow of the Earth, they are seen with a part of the disk darkened and the other one still illuminated; and the most subtle ones are the Penumbral Eclipses, in which only a slight darkening of the disk can be appreciated.

The Eclipse from this month will be a Penumbral Eclipse. The last Total Lunar Eclipse we could see was on September 2015, the next one will not be until 31 of January 2018, but in Catalonia we will not be able to see any of them until the 27-28 July 2018.

In this Eclipse the Moon, instead of plunging into the dark inner core of Earth's shadow (called the umbra), passed deeply into Earth's dusky outer shadow, the penumbra. It was easily perceived some darkening of the Moon's surface.

Phases of the Eclipse