Watching the Lunar Eclipse

We’re always fascinated by the unique wonders of space and the world—what can we say, it’s the geek in us! Naturally, when we learned that part of the world will be treated to a rare 100-minute long total lunar eclipse starting at 11:20am PDT today, we were both excited and disappointed that this rare occasion wouldn’t be visible from our Mountain View campus like last year’s eclipse. We suspect we aren’t alone, so you’ll be glad to know that we’ve worked with Slooh Space Camera to let you experience the spectacle wherever you are in the world, in real time.


Slooh will host a live mission interface using Google App Engine that lets anyone not lucky enough to live in certain areas (South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia) take part in this rare astronomical event. It’s equipped with audio narrations from real-life astronomers so you can hear a firsthand, expert account of the event. You can also watch the live stream on the Google YouTube Channel or from the Sky layer in Google Earth (download this kml), while exploring the fascinating world that exists in our galaxy. Finally, those of you on the go can download the Slooh Space Camera Android app to view the images right on your phone.

If you’re fortunate enough to be able to view this event in the sky, we hope you’ll get the chance to step outside and indulge in the spectacle. For everyone else, we hope our moon madness helps brighten your day.

Lunar Eclipse Live

It’ll be a dark and stormy night on the moon. Well, dark anyway, because tonight is the only total lunar eclipse of 2010.
Visible to people in North America starting at about 9pm Pacific this evening, the Earth will pass between the sun and moon, blocking the sun’s light from reaching the moon’s surface.
We’ve launched a live telescope feed in Google Sky, and we’ll be broadcasting the whole event so that you can keep tabs on the event regardless of the local weather conditions.
To find the feed, which we created in partnership with slooh.com, fire up Google Earth and enter Sky Mode by clicking on the Planet Icon in the toolbar and selecting Sky.
Then, open up the Current Sky Events folder and click on the blue Slooh Space Camera link to open the feed balloon.

Be sure to check back after the eclipse too and follow along as we and Slooh broadcast more live images from their telescopes.
Posted by Noel Gorelick, Chief Extraterrestrial Observer