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On Saturday October 12th a quite rare phenomenon occurred; a partial solar eclipse. This eclipse was visible from Northern Canada, all Europe and Northern Africa.
Many Astronomy On-Line groups took to opportunity to observe this event and in most cases they followed the detailed instructions which were published in advance. A large number of very fine observations were obtained!
As of October 24, the average value of the Lunar Distance, calculated from the reported observations is 408 000 +/- 32 000 km (Standard Deviation). The true value is 390 406 km (geocentric), so this result, obtained exclusively by means of observations done by Astronomy On-Line groups, is less than 5 percent off.
This is a very impressive result of a unique observational campaign! Congratulations to all contributing groups!
A complete report with details about the observations by the participating groups, and an overall summary of the results obtained will be published as soon as possible. This report will also contain all links to images etc. available at the various sites.
However, excellent reports are still coming in, and the organisers have decided to wait a little longer in order to obtain the most complete overview. For this reason, various provisional reports have been published and you will find below the corresponding links. They will be superseded by the final report, once it is ready. Additional software for the 2-D method has also been published.
In case you have not done so already, please send your report by email to the European Student Project Group - by clicking, you will get the mailserver.
Several groups used the 3-D method to determine the distance to the Moon. Here is the first report which connects all the data obtained in different places.
First provisional report in HTML-format with images and many links to interesting sites where you will find many more images.
Rather complete overview. Still in ASCII-format.
First, reasonably complete overview. In ASCII-format.
Software for the 2-D (published on October 24, 1996) and 3-D observing methods
Updated summary and still incomplete list of individual observations by groups, as published in Astronomy On-Line Newspaper no. 4 on October 22, 1996.
Provisional summary and list with links to sites with images, videos, etc., as published in Astronomy On-Line Newspaper no. 3 on October 15, 1996.