TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE

Live from Hawaiʻi

25-26 May 2021

The 'Total Lunar Eclipse - Live from Hawaiʻi' is an initiative to live stream the 26 May 2021 total lunar eclipse from the island of Hawaiʻi, to the rest of the world. Hawaiʻi is ideally located to view the entirety of the total lunar eclipse, which will span 5 hours from start to end. At totality, the 'Super Full Moon' will be eclipsed for about 14 minutes.

The Total Lunar Eclipse will be live-streamed from three different locations on the Island of Hawaiʻi, with three different types of equipment. Each live stream will have a different but complementary field of view and will be carried out by three different groups:

One of the live streams will be done using a PANOPTES robot at Mauna Loa. Project PANOPTES is a citizen science project which aims to build a worldwide network of small robotic observatories to detect exoplanet transits. The PANOPTES robot will capture the eclipse using a DSLR camera and a medium telephoto lens with a field of view of 10x15 degrees. This field of view will cover the moon and some of the most beautiful deep sky objects in the Scorpius constellation.
Another live stream is planned by the group 'Starry Knights' (a team of two postdocs from Subaru telescope and Keck telescope) at Waimea, a city in the northern part of Hawaiʻi. They will live stream a video feed of the eclipse using a long telephoto lens with a field of view that only shows the Moon in closeup. The Moon's position in the night sky will be tracked with an astronomy mount over the duration of the eclipse.
The Subaru-Asahi Star Camera (at Maunakea) will play a unique role in this network of live streams by relaying the ever-changing starry sky and ground scenery caused by the lunar eclipse rather than the moon itself. Japan's Subaru Telescope will be deployed as the ground scenery. During the total lunar eclipse, a gorgeous Summer Milky Way will be streaming behind the Subaru Telescope dome.

Watch the live stream here!

Live from Mauna Loa

Project PANOPTES

Live from Maunakea

Live Sky Camera

Live from Waimea

Starry Knights

Live Stream Partners

Project PANOPTES

A citizen science project that aims to make it easy for anyone to build a low-cost, robotic telescope that can be used to detect transiting exoplanets. The PANOPTES community spans the world, with founding members in Hawai'i.

Website

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Live Sky Camera

A collaborative project between Asahi Shimbun (a Japanese newspaper) and Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, to show the beautiful night sky over Maunakea to children and the public interested in astronomy.

YouTube

Starry Knights

An initiative by two astronomers to take astronomy to the public and spark an interest in stargazing. An attempt to bridge societal differences with our cosmic similarities and to tackle ignorance with science.

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YouTube