🌞 🌏 🌕 PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE Tuesday Night (17 September 2024)

(The eclipse below has now passed into the history books. For details on upcoming eclipses near you, and everywhere else on earth, visit the timeanddate.com eclipse pages. And note that timeanddate.com often livestreams eclipses from all around the world, so even if an upcoming eclipse is happening in some remote corner of the globe, you and your students may still be able to watch it live from the comfort of your homeschool living room.) 🛋

Just a reminder that there will be a partial lunar eclipse this Tuesday–Wednesday night (17–18 September 2024). It will be visible across most of North and South America, weather permitting, so be sure to take your homeschool scientists outside for a look.

For the exact timing of the eclipse in your area, visit the timeanddate.com eclipse page and enter your city or zipcode:

• ➢ Partial Lunar Eclipse, 17–18 September 2024 (timeanddate.com)

This is a partial eclipse, not a total eclipse: the earth’s deep shadow (the umbra) will just clip the edge of the moon over the course of an hour, with maximum coverage occurring about 10:45 p.m. in the eastern U.S. timezone. There will be a total lunar eclipse coming up in March 2025 across most of North America, so if you take your students out to see the partial eclipse this week, they’ll have a good basis for comparison and contrast when March comes around.

If you can’t make it outside or if the weather is poor in your area, timeanddate.com will also be livestreaming this eclipse, so if it’s too cloudy or too rainy or too cold or too hot, you and your homescholars can spend a successful eclipse-viewing night indoors in cozy comfort.

Timeanddate.com also has a handy little primer on how lunar eclipses occur (and solar eclipses too), so you’ll be ready to teach a great little lesson. 🌞 🌏 🌕

What other celestial sights and astronomical alignments will you and your students be investigating in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 🔭

❡ Remembrance of eclipses past: We have watched quite a few eclipses together in the River Houses, both solar and lunar. You can review (and rewatch!) many of them on the timeanddate.com website: 14 October 2023 (annular solar), 7–8 November 2022 (total lunar), 15–16 May 2022 (total lunar), 18–19 November 2021 (partial lunar), 2 July 2019 (total solar), and 20–21 January 2019 (total lunar). 🌞 🌕

❡ All the star-sown sky: Teaching your students the major constellations and the names of the principal stars is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Our recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas both contain charts of the constellations that will help you learn your way around the heavens. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time with your students beneath the starry vault. ✨

❡ Star bright: If you’d like some light and easy homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our annual River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us month by month as we make twelve heavenly friends-for-life over the course of the year. 🌟

❡ The starry archipelagoes: For a great weekly astronomical essay, perfect for older homeschoolers, pay a visit to “The Sky This Week” from the U.S. Naval Observatory. These well-written pages usually focus on one or two special astronomical events or phenomena. If you have high school astronomy students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and then narrate a summary back to you. 🌌

❡ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Subscribe to our free River Houses newsletter to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🔭

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

❡ Support our work: If you enjoy our educational materials, please support us by starting your regular Amazon shopping from our very own homeschool teaching supplies page. When you click through from our page, any purchase you make earns us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping us to keep going and growing! 🛒

❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡