Last Night’s Eclipse Earthshine Event

By Gary Campbell

Torontoist is looking for some answers about last night’s lunar eclipse.
What eclipse, you say? If the photo above is any proof, last night, between 8:00 and 9:30, looking up to the sky in the West, you would have been greeted with the tiny sliver of moon smiling back at you. But a quick review of yesterday’s and today’s major media outlets reveals a big nada about the event. Indeed, even a search of Google News for “eclipse toronto” will remind you about a big eclipse that happened on March 3 — one that was totally invisible due to high cloud cover — but nothing of last night’s celestial party.
It was a great night for starwatchers. The sky was so clear last night that dozens of major constellations were easily visible, something that doesn’t happen often in Toronto’s light pollution haze.
So we put out a question to all astronomy-minded readers: What can you tell us about last night’s eclipse? And while we’re pretty sure that bright “star” in the above photo is actually a planet, anyone know which one?
UPDATE: OK, so last night’s phenomena wasn’t an eclipse — it was instead an occurance of Earthshine. The moon was lit up in an eclipse-like way because of light being reflected off the Earth. Leonardo Da Vinci was apparently very mystified by the effect, and so were we. Maybe it wasn’t an eclipse, but it made for beautiful viewing. And that bright planet in the sky was Venus. (Thanks to Drew for the information!)