December 2009 Lunar Eclipse
A partial lunar eclipse was visible on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2009. It was the last and largest of four minor lunar eclipses in 2009. This lunar eclipse is also notable, because it occurred during a blue moon (a second full moon in December). The next eclipse on New Year's Eve and blue moon will occur on December 31, 2028.
Only a small portion of the Moon entered the Earth's umbral shadow, but there was a distinct darkening visible over the Moon's southern surface at greatest eclipse.
Read more about December 2009 Lunar Eclipse: Visibility
Famous quotes containing the words december, lunar and/or eclipse:
“For I have lost the race I never ran,
A rathe December blights my lagging May;”
—Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849)
“A bird half wakened in the lunar noon
Sang halfway through its little inborn tune.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)