MBK-Team Lunar eclipses - Total Lunar Eclipse January 9, 2001 from Slovenia

Total Lunar eclipse

January 9, 2001

Four members of MBK Team drove to Zaplana, Slovenia (630 m elevation) to observe and record the Total Lunar eclipse. We arrived to the site at about 18:50 LT. At about 19:00 the penumbral eclipse became apparent. After the first contact with the umbra it appeared that the eclipse would be quite bright as the lunar rim was readily visible in the umbra (in contrast with the January 21, 2000 eclipse). After the beginning of the total eclipse the edge of the umbra appeared orange to yellow with the other portion of the Moon being bright red, we (KACJA, ZAKJU and ATAJU) assinged it a value of L=3.4. During mid-eclipse the brighter rim almost completely disappeared while the darkest part of the Moon was brownish in color. We assigned it L=2.8. At the end L=3.3. Comparing it with previous eclipses, it was brighter than Jan 21, 2000 eclipse but darker than 1997 and 1996 eclipses.
Apart from photographing the eclipse we also did two visual projects: estimating the magnitude of the eclipsed Moon with reversed binoculars and christmas globe and estimating the limiting sky magnitude during the eclipse. The Moon magnitude is represented on graph 1, the lowest value was achieved during mid-eclipse with the magnitude estimated between -1.3 and -1.4. The naked eye limiting magnitude was between 6.5 and 7.0 during mid-eclipse, the difference caused by a difference in perception of both observers.