Saturday, March 03, 2007

Lunar eclipse tonight

I'm not in a good location for it (and we're pretty cloudy right now, too, worse the luck), but there's a total eclipse of the moon tonight. See NASA - Eclipses During 2007 for more. (Via Danielle Bean.)

A request to those of you in a good area for viewing: please keep the outdoor lights to a minimum, if you can. When I was in college, we set up on top of a several-story building to watch and photograph a lunar eclipse. Just as it started getting good, a couple of athletes turned on the floodlights for night playing at the tennis court. Which was situated at the foot of the building on which we were perched. Naturally.

I think we scared them silly with our howls of dismay (there not usually being people on the roof, much less in the middle of the night, much less howly people). When we got coherent enough to tell them why we were upset, they graciously tried to turn off the lights. But couldn't. The lights were on a timeset, and flipping the switch had turned them on for a half hour or hour or whatever. I guess the college had had trouble with people leaving the lights on, and so had opted for a system that turned them off after what was deemed a reasonable lapse of time under normal circumstances.

At any rate, we could sorta see the eclipse, but not very well, and forget using the more-sensitive scientific equipment we'd dragged up there. Bummer. :(

2 comments:

Keziah said...

I am on night shift at the moment, so managed to get outside for a few minutes to see some of the eclipse but it was rather cloudy here. I remember being so excited when I was little to see them, if only because it meant I got to stay up late! The BBC News website has got some amazing photos of the eclipse if you missed it.

Kathryn Judson said...

Keziah, Welcome to my blog! Thanks for the comment.