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ABSTRACT

Stothers 2005

Stothers, R.B., 2005: Stratospheric transparency derived from total lunar eclipse colors, 1801-1881. Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific, 117, 1445-1450.

Contemporary journals have been searched for published accounts of the observed colors of total lunar eclipses in the period 1801-1881. The result is a catalog of 31 reported lunar eclipses. A dark eclipse on a clear night usually implies the presence of significant turbidity in the Earth's stratosphere arising from a recent volcanic eruption. The totally eclipsed Moon became invisible (or nearly so) in the year after the great 1815 eruption of Tambora. Eclipse data compiled here cast doubt on any significant penetration of the stratosphere for a number of other large volcanic eruptions, but are too sparsely distributed in time to say anything conclusive about certain others.

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