So what am I missing?

[redbird]

I was boggled, reading LiveJournal this morning, to see that three of my friends had seen their first lunar eclipse last night.

I sort of assume that people--certainly adults, and certainly science fiction fans--have seen eclipses. I've spent a couple of hours on a Toronto rooftop late at night watching one, and gone out into Inwood Hill Park on a cold winter night for another.

When I was seven, my parents did the pinhole camera thing for us for a partial solar eclipse. I mentioned this to cattitude who said "Me too. Nine"--same eclipse, same area of the country. A few years back, I was part of the crowd in Bryant Park for another partial solar eclipse, conveniently at standard office lunch time; I wasn't too surprised to be the only person in my department (of seven) who went out for it, but cheerfully borrowed someone's Mylar glasses to look at the sun for a moment (yes, Mom, I know--some risks are worth it) along with doing the pinhole camera thing and looking at the odd shadows. Solar eclipses are trickier: rarer and briefer (I've never seen a full solar eclipse), and at least once I've looked forward to one, and awakened to a cloudy sky that never cleared enough to show us anything.

Along with wondering who else I need to show a lunar eclipse to, I'm wondering if there's something that half of you would be surprised that I've never seen. (Other than a large collection of television programming, that is.)

Lunar eclipses over the next several years are listed here (as well as numerous other places). There will be two total lunar eclipses in 2004, and then none until 2007.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

When I was a child, I REALLY REALLY wanted to see an eclipse, but there were none scheduled to be visible in New York until the far future, perhaps even the mythical 21st century. Somewhere along the line, I gave up.

[lysana.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. The first total lunar eclipse I saw was during the 1970's in Massachusetts. I don't remember the precise date (may have been in October). Surely an eclipse visible there would've been available for viewing in New York?

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Total solar eclipses are worth travelling a long way to see. I was fortunate to still have an amateur astronomer as a close friend when one passed within sixty miles of my house back in the early 1980s, and the details of it are with me still.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I saw a complete solar eclipse on August 11, 1999, in Totnes, Devon, UK.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I saw that one from Ireland, not quite totality but over 99% thereof.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I saw this one in Augsburg, Germany; it was my 29th birthday.

It rained all over Germany that day, but there was a glorious 15-minute break in the clouds just in time to showcase the eclipse where I was.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I actually didn't go see the lunar eclipse because my first one scared the beJeezus out of me. (In Revelations there's a line about how "the sun became as sackcloth and the moon as red as blood". Seeing that red moon when I was a little Fundamentalist girl, I thought the end of the world was coming, and I didn't want it to.. So that's my funny eclipse story.)

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

I've seen 3? solar, but no lunar before last night. Bad timings, heretofor.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. I see them every chance I get, and it's not infrequent, and I rather assume that everyone else is running around revising their schedule (at least slightly) so they can also see them. In the Bay Area, last night's was (as Alan says) "literally a washout." It was pouring in buckets all through the eclipse time.

I haven't seen a total solar eclipse since I was a child, since I don't travel to see them (though I find it easy to comprehend the friends that do). In a partial solar eclipse in the late 1970s, however, I got enormous fascination out of watching my cat flip out. "What's wrong with the light??

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

I've seen other ones but not last night's -- it was cloudy all day, and pouring rain by the time of the eclipse.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I've seen at least one other lunar eclipse. I missed last night's, but did get to see some of the last little bit of it.

I've never seen a full solar eclipse, but would travel to see one. Jane went to the UK to see the on in 99, but it was cloudy where she was. She at least got to see the change in light.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Can't say I ever saw a lunar eclipse. (And it was cloudy last night in Chicago.)

Maybe I'm just too much of a theoretician. It's enough for me to know that they happen.

B

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

This was about the second or third time I've actually sat outside and watched a lunar eclipse. I've seen a partial solar eclipse a couple of times too -- a few years ago, one happened while I was at work, a bunch of us went outside during the peak of it and tried different viewing devices, from the old pinhole-camera box to a welder's visor belonging to a neighbor of a coworker. My favorite was actually the simplest, the multiple images as the sunlight filtered between the leaves of the oak tree in the library's front yard. Same principle as the pinhole camera, but it made lots of little crescent-shaped suns visible on the driveway!

Last night, I sat on my front porch, which faces east, for almost an hour as the eclipse turned from almost total through totality to getting bright again. I would have stayed out longer except that, even bundled up, I was cold, but the sky was totally clear and the view was brilliant. I had my binoculars with me to see the Moon even better. Nice view of stars (the Pleiades were nearby) and Mars, too.

I didn't see anyone else in my neighborhood watching, not even briefly. The teenagers next door and some of their friends were going in and out of their house but if they noticed it at all, I didn't notice them noticing.

There are usually two lunar and two solar eclipses every year, the way I understand it, because of the relative positions of Earth, Moon and Sun. But they're only visible in certain parts of the world, which changes from eclipse to eclipse.

[sraun]

I got to see a partial solar eclipse when I was growing up - must have been mid- to late-60's. Dad had bought us an inexpensive Sears telescope with the projection add-on so that we could see the eclipse - it was neat.

I don't remember my first total lunar eclipse - I think it was either at college or shortly after I moved to Minneapolis, but it could have been when I was a kid.