TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE:

What's up in space They came from outer space--and you can have one! Genuine meteorites are now on sale in the Space Weather Store.

TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE: Today, Dec. 10th, the full Moon passed through the shadow of Earth, producing a total lunar eclipse visible across the Pacific hemisphere. Don Oberbeck sends this picture of the partially-eclipsed Moon setting behind the Rocky Mountains near Boulder, CO:

"The Moon set behind Long's Peak at 6:49 am MST moments before totality," says Oberbeck.

During the total phase of the eclipse, the Moon turned a beautiful shade of copper-red. Browse the links for more images: from Thad V'Soske of Western Colorado; from Peter Lipscomb of Santa Fe, NM; from Sergio Castillo of Inglewood, California; from Christopher Handler of Adelaide, Australia; from Peter Lipscomb of Santa Fe, NM; from Pete Strasser of Kailua Kona, HI; from Steven Janowiecki of Bloomington, Indiana; from Doug Schmutz of Hamblin Valley, Utah; from Paul Schneider of Tucson, Arizona; from Joseph Shaw of Bozeman, Montana, USA ; from Jerry Zhu of Middleton, Wisconsin; from Gururaj of Mysore, Karnataka, India;

...AND A TOTALLY DIFFERENT ECLIPSE: On Dec. 8th, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observed an unusual event on the sun: An erupting cloud of plasma was eclipsed by a dark magnetic filament. Play the movie for a visual explanation:

The source of the explosion is a farside active region due to turn toward Earth in a few days. For now, though, the blast site lies just behind the sun's eastern limb--perfectly situated for this rare kind of eclipse. Note the filament of relatively cool dark material snaking across the sun's surface in the foreground. That filament partially blocks our view of hot plasma exploding behind it. By studying how the light of the explosion is filtered by the foreground material, SDO mission scientists might be able to learn something new about dark filaments on the sun.

Space Weather News for Dec. 9, 2011
http://spaceweather.com