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

[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.