I'm in San Francisco California at the moment, most news channels were reporting a lunar eclipse was going to take place yesterday evening but all I saw was a slight decrease in light!

Is there anyone else on or near the west coast of America, and what did you see?

 

Regards, Ciaran

 

 

Sadly I didn't see it. However, the sun was orange this morning when I went to school, which looked amazing with the clouds surrounding it. I should have taken a picture.

If you mean the solar eclipse, only saw it in the newspapers since I live in the wrong part of the world, but looked pretty awesome.

The apparent similarity in size between the sun and moon are because the sun is about 400 times farther away. With the actual size of the moon so much smaller the corridor where a total solar eclipse is visible is only a few dozen miles wide. A wider corridor will experience a partial solar eclipse, with areas closer to the center experiencing larger percentages of the sun obscured.

 

A couple of weeks ago the full moon occurred near the time the moon was moving through the lowest portion of its orbit, producing a slightly larger than usual appearance. This should make the new moon near the highest point in its orbit, where the more distant moon would appear slightly smaller than it usually does in comparison to the sun. With this smaller apparent diameter those who would otherwise experience a total eclipse instead experience the moon obscuring all but the extreme outer edge off the sun's disc, which some call a "ring of fire".

 

When a solar eclipse occurs with the moon in a lower portion of its orbit there are interesting "beads" in the band of light around the moon where light shines across valleys and impact craters along the edge of the dark moon. The gases surrounding the sun are visible as a blue glow that gradually gets dimmer the higher it is above where the sun's edge would normally appear. The whole neighborhood is briefly plunged in a level of darkness with light levels no higher than night with partial moonlight.

 

Unfortunately the visible light of the sun is reduced enough in a partial eclipse that people are not forced to look away after a brief glance. A longer look during a partial eclipse could result in eye injury from the sun's ultraviolet light emissions. Normal sun glasses are not adequate protection. Unless you are using pretty dark filters similar to those used by electric arc welders partial eclipses should only be viewed indirectly; a simple cardboard shoe box with a small hole in the end towards the sun will project an image of the sun on the inside of the other end (basically a pinhole camera).