Moon glow

And what were you doing early this morning, say about 2:30 am PDT? Carolyn and I were sitting out on our porch, holding hands, enjoying the 68 degree breeze, watching the eclipse of the moon and wondering how many more eclipses we'll watch in our lifetime. This morning's eclipse was a total lunar eclipse that lasted 1 hour 31 minutes. The partial eclipse phases on each side of the total eclipse lasted for probably two hours more so it was quite a show. We don't often get them that long. Actually the conditions were perfect for moon watching.

This morning I had some fun doing a little research on the Internet on lunar eclipses. I had thought that lunar eclipses were much more common than solar eclipses but that isn't the case. According to InfoPlease, each year "a maximum of seven eclipses can occur, either four solar and three lunar or five solar and two lunar". But solar eclipses can only be seen by those on the earth's surface which are in a very narrow path described by the moon's shadow across the face of the earth while a lunar eclipse is seen by almost half the world (although because of the weather, local vegetation, and atmospheric conditions, far fewer than half can really see the eclipse.

MrEclipse.com has a great essay on Lunar Eclipses for Beginners which includes the great photos I've included here as well as a table of all the lunar eclipses between 2000 and 2010. You can mark the next one on your calendar and not have to say, "darn, I missed it again!"

By reading the essay you can also know more about the moon than one of my elementary school teachers who insisted that there was no difference between the monthly phases of the moon and the eclipse of the moon. Both were caused by the shadow of the earth covering part of the moon. Sad. I tried to set her straight but I don't think she ever did believe me.