🌕Total lunar eclipse on 7 September 2025

A long total lunar eclipse on the evening of 7 September 2025, visible from Europe at moonrise. Watched from the hill, start to finish, with a flask.

Nothing practical. I am keeping it because it was an unhurried evening in a month that did not have many: the case due on the 26th, the scorecards project opening the next morning, three people to ask for sponsorship.

Jonas explained the colour without being asked. The light reaching the Moon has passed through the edge of the Earth's atmosphere, so it is every sunrise and sunset on the planet at once. He draws sections for a living, and on the back of the flask's paper bag he drew this one, to scale as far as the bag allowed.

I did 🪷 The view from above properly for once, since I was already on the hill it was written on. The docks, the cranes, the line 4 tram crossing the bridge, and above all of it a shadow the size of a planet moving at its own speed.

What we saw, by the clock.

• 19:45. On the mound with the flask. Sky clear overhead, haze over the south bank. No Moon that we can see.
• 20:05. Found it. Lower and further left than either of us had been looking.
• 20:12. Deepest point. Through the binoculars the disc looks round for once, like a ball and not a plate.
• 20:53. End of totality. A thin bright edge on one side, startling after an hour of dull red.
• 21:55. The last of the shadow gone, or near enough. Cold. Walked down.

The line that goes with that exercise is 💬 The universe is transformation life is. With a planet's shadow doing the demonstration it took less effort than usual.

• A real event, and this time at a civilised hour. Total lunar eclipse on Sunday 7 September 2025, with totality lasting well over an hour. Seen across Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe.
• From here the Moon rose already eclipsed. So there was no slow bite to watch: it came up over the south bank dark and coppery, like something that had been left on a hob.
• Watched from 🌳 Castle Mound with Jonas Reuter, a flask of tea, a blanket, and Edith's binoculars round my neck. About forty people on the grass below the keep and one very serious tripod.
• For the first quarter of an hour we could not find it. A red Moon low in a hazy sky has almost no contrast. Jonas found it first and was insufferable.
• March was cloud at 05:40 on my birthday. This is the account settled.