Information on the Total Lunar Eclipse of 12-21-2010 Updated with Live Stream

**1.21am** Here is a live stream of the eclipse from the Marshall Space center in Alabama: SpaceVidCast: (the NASA stream isn't showing anything...)

Orion is on the upper right and Canis Major is on the lower left. Photo Credit: Bobby Coggins

The night skies are clear for the first time in over a week. I missed out on this years Geminid meteor shower, which I hear was spectacular. Figures. Anyway, I'm hoping that the forecast for mostly cloudy skies for next week's Total Lunar Eclipse proves to be wrong, because I've been waiting on it for over two years, since the Feb 2008 Total Lunar Eclipse. [see 2008 live-blog photos] [see 2008 post eclipse photos]


A very good source of information on next Tuesday morning's Lunar Eclipse is Fred Espenek's Mr Eclipse page. He is the author of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Eclipse Page. Science at NASA also has a brief article.


Other good sources of info:


Astronomy Magazine
Sky and Telescope Magazine


I've swiped an image from his website that provides a very good overview of the event for the lay person:















I will be outside watching the eclipse very early next Tuesday morning...and will be tweeting and uploading pics to TwitPic during the event from my @ThunderPig twitter account.


**3.12am** I should add that the next opportunity (after this one) for observing a Total Lunar Eclipse in our area will be in April 2014 [pdf]...then we'll be blessed with four total lunar eclipses over the next eighteen months.