A total lunar eclipse is conjectured to have influence on the physical conditions of an environmental area, particularly on the brightness of the sky. The phenomenon might also be relevant on weather parameters change on Earth, such as temperature, humidity and pressure, though a straightforward correlation is not easy to establish. This work mainly aims at measuring the brightness of the sky a...

Johannes Kepler first attributed the visibility of lunar eclipses to refraction in the Earth’s atmosphere in his Astronomiae Pars Optica in 1604. We describe a method for rendering images of lunar eclipses including color contributions due to refraction, dispersion, and scattering in the Earth’s atmosphere. We present an efficient model of refraction and scattering in the atmosphere, including ...

The residual brightness of the shadowed Moon during a lunar eclipse is attributed to unscattered sunlight rays refracted in the Earth’s atmosphere. The classical theory of lunar eclipses is built on the premise that the sunlight scattered by the gases and particles in the atmosphere contributes negligibly to the brightness of the eclipsed Moon. The current work revisits the lunar eclipse theory...

The ancient Greek astronomical calculating machine, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, predicted eclipses, based on the 223-lunar month Saros cycle. Eclipses are indicated on a four-turn spiral Saros Dial by glyphs, which describe type and time of eclipse and include alphabetical index letters, referring to solar eclipse inscriptions. These include Index Letter Groups, describing shared eclips...

Two Burmese eclipse calculations, one lunar and one solar, are analysed using examples from a Burmese manuscript. The fundamental parameters are with some important exceptions the same as in the Suryasiddhanta, but the handling of, for instance, parallax in the solar eclipse is different and much simplified. Specific to Burma are also the shadow calculations.

The glyphs, which are presented in full in Figure S13, not only made predictions of a lunar or solar eclipse in a particular month but also what time of day that eclipse might occur. Eclipse times in the glyphs are given as integers on a 12-hour scale using the ancient Greek number system with the alphabet standing for numbers and an additional symbol ς for 6. The times in the glyphs are modifi...