Luna Obscura

OK, I've done the pinhole in the shoebox thing. It was an amazing thing to see a solar eclipse, albeit indirectly so as not to go blind. But somehow I've always missed lunar eclipses, maybe partly for lack of effort because they aren't as sexy as the dramatic daytime event, but also because they always seem to happen in the middle of the night. Until tonight. Finally we - Mother Earth - are passing between the sun and the moon in late evening, and I am awake and aware of it (instead of slapping my forehead upon reading about it the next day). Not only that, but the moon is visible just outside the kitchen door, unobscured by tall trees or buildings, and the sky is clear after an afternoon snowstorm!

To top it all off, I was reminded of it in Yahoo! news at 10:00 p.m., just as it was beginning. I walked outside, and there it was: the moon's dusty orange tint* and Earth's shadow partially covering its face. And Saturn and the star Regulus, I am told, are the two bright "stars" near it, like two eyes to the nose of the moon. (Where is my big brother's telescope when you need it?!) What a privilege to witness this event!

10:30: I go back out, and it's less orange and more dark.

11:00: The moon is now almost completely in shadow, with just a sliver of a white crescent on one side. Even when the eclipse is full, indirect sunlight still reaches the moon after passing through Earth's atmosphere, rendering the whole moon fully visible even at its darkest.

11:15: The eclipse is now starting to end as our shadow continues passing across the moon's face. Almost a quarter is now the bright white we are used to seeing.

I took Astronomy as an undergrad (in partial fulfillment of a science requirement), and my jaw dropped regularly as I read incredible things about the universe, things that I swore had to have been fabricated by the textbook authors. Not only were they fantastic to consider, but the methods of discovery seemed unknowable. Even if these things were true, how could anyone explore, study, and analyze phenomena that were light years away? (And who was naming these things, anyway, and cataloging them?)

This course (as well as anatomy and physiology many years later, as I prepared for grad school) made me wonder how anyone could possibly not believe in God.

11:29: Half moon. I'm calling it a night. The next one is December 20, 2010. Plenty of time to check Consumer Reports for telescopes.

Photo credits: AP

* Maybe Snoopy was right; maybe the moon is made of American cheese.