You are hereArchive - Jun 15, 2011
Archive - Jun 15, 2011
To Nature: Lunar eclipse today, June 15, 2011 11:20am PDT, visible in skies of S America, Africa, Asia, Australia & Europe
A simulation of what today's lunar eclipse should look. Credit: Google
Lunar eclipse: Google, YouTube broadcast the astronomical event live.
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June 15, 2011: The lunar event will last about 100 minutes YouTube will be broadcasting on the Web a red-glowing lunar eclipse today at 11:20 a.m. PDT that otherwise will only be visible in the skies of South America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. Sorry, North America.
The lunar event will last about 100 minutes and be live-streamed in video to Google's official YouTube channel.
"We're always fascinated by the unique wonders of space and the world -- what can we say, it's the geek in us," wrote Noel Gorelick, Google's chief extraterrestrial observer, in a company blog post.
"Naturally, when we learned that part of the world will be treated to a rare 100-minute-long total lunar eclipse starting at 11:20 am 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."
Suspecting they weren't alone in wanting to see the eclipse, a team of Googlers contacted the folks at Web-broadcasting Slooh SpaceCamera to get a real-time video feed of the eclipse onto YouTube.
Slooh is hosting a mission interface Web app, built using Google's App Engine technology, that will also broadcast the video feed and will be "equipped with audio narrations from real-life astronomers so you can hear a firsthand, expert account of the event," Gorelick said. read more »
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