Eclipse

[pameladean]

This is only the third lunar eclipse that I've paid close attention to. (I credit Eric with focusing my attention.) The thing that always strikes me most, but that I always forget, is that at totality, the moon stops looking like a flat disk painted on the sky and becomes three-dimensional. It seems much closer then, like a hot-air balloon or a strange spaceship.

It's mostly clear here, and bitterly cold. Raphael and I have been looking at the moon from the second-story windows, but it's now too high for that. The glass in the back door gives a magnificent view, however. The moon is not a very deep red, but rather a pleasant dark orange. I have seen scarier eclipses. This moon rose a mellower orange and then went pale yellow before the shadow touched it.

If we ever replace the back door, we must get another with a glass panel in it. I've done a great deal of stargazing through that glass when the weather was inhospitable.

P.

Comments

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

I've been watching the eclipse too.

They never fail to amaze me no matter how often I see them.

[(Anonymous)]

oh it's wonderful, isn't it, the smoky stain that makes it seem that much closer and important in an intimate way-- you are quite right about the scale and 3-dimensions. It is cold and clear here too.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

I've been stepping out onto my front porch every 15 minutes or so to check the progress of the eclipse. Here in SE Michigan, the moon was its usual bright white before the eclipse began, and the unshadowed portion stayed white until totality; then the color went from dark gold to red-orange to red to dark gray.

I was expecting the brightness to return from left to right, the same direction the shadow moved in; but the returning brightness began at the bottom.

I have it on good authority that the bright "star" to the lower left of the moon is Saturn; the star above it is Regulus.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

It's clear and pale blue here--looks like an odd crescent moon.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

I actually went outside to see this -- only I was thoroughly spoiled by growing up in near-rural NM for starwatching, so I kept complaining abt the streetlights. A bunch of other people hiked up a big hill in our neighborhood to watch/film/photograph it too. Not blood-red at all, but sort of a v dark dusky red-orange....and you're right, it does look v 3-d, not at all like a little bright dime up in the sky.

[clindau.livejournal.com]

I watched it at the G through one of the tall windows in the Not-A-Skyway that crosses Second Street, as time permitted from my show duties. Very cool. At intermission half the cast and most of the crew were looking out the window watching the eclipse. I looked back down the N-A-S and saw people in the fourth floor lobby looking down at us through the big blue window. Watchers being watched. Hmmm.

The first lunar eclipse I remember seeing also involved the G, back in 1989. It was opening night of The Duchess of Malfi. Quite appropriate, that.