Singular Event: Super Blue Blood Moon this Morning

Photo by Ian Fieggen, Wikimedia
Once in a lifetime is a good reason to pry myself out of bed before dawn and attend a sky show. It was very cold and clear outside at 5am this morning, January 31st. The total eclipse of a Super, Blue moon last occurred in 1866. This coincidence of a Super, Blue, Blood moon eclipse won't happen again until 2037. I first looked out the greenhouse window in the kitchen. The moon is full, but a smudgy shadow of itself. "It's better outside," my husband, Bob, says. Even our 22 year old son staggers out for a brief look, then heads back to bed.

I step into the cold, wrapped in my flannel robe and warm slippers. Past the power pole and my neighbors houses, the moon hangs in the western sky, a dusky rose-orange color, lighter in the lower left edges. The eclipse is just entering totality with the earth's shadow fully covering the moon. Raising binoculars, the magnification reveals the details of lunar valleys, craters, and plains, called "maria," colored purple, and mountains, termed "highlands," bloom as splashes of orange and magenta. The sphere hangs in the velvet black of the sky, a foreign globe replacing the familiar, flat, white disk where the "Man in the Moon" or the "Rabbit Churning Butter" are the regular features most easily viewed without magnification.

For over an hour, we go in and out of the house. It's too cold to stay outside for the duration. I notice the neighbors lights are on, but if they're viewing the eclipse, they must be in their backyards. We're the only ones out on the street. My hearty neighbor went out for an early row with his whale boat team, to view the spectacle from the water. Inside the warmth of the house, we go online to see live feeds from planetariums across the West Coast and Hawaii. The "Astral Music" track adds a hypnotic, meditative feel to the magnified red moon on display.

Outside again, I notice the Big Dipper hanging further up in the sky, as if it had poured out the blood red moon below it. The lower left edge of the moon is brightening and I know the total eclipse won't last much longer. Through the binoculars, Bob and I take in the view again and again, examining the contours and wondering at the surface details we can see in the low, red glow.

Totality ends as a white crescent of light appears on the left side of the moon, though the rest remains in red shadow. It almost seems as if I can see the edge of the light racing across the plains and mountains of the moon, chasing the orange field of the eclipse. With my naked eye, the eclipse turns into the thumb of God, tracing across the moon, swiping a shadow that grows smaller and smaller, replaced by the white reflection of the rising sun. The moon sinks lower in the northwest, just as a quarter of the eclipse remains, framed by the rooftops and a large redwood tree. Finally the remaining eclipse is lost to us as the moon sinks below the horizon.

Viewing the Super Blue Blood Moon reminds me of when my husband and I drove out to camp in the desert when Halley's comet was on its return trip past Earth from around the sun in 1986. After a cold night, we rose in the wee hours of the morning to try and see the smudge of light. While it didn't compare to the illustrations I recalled from Science books in my youth, it was still a rewarding endeavor since it isn't expected to return until 2061. If I'm still around, which is unlikely, I probably won't be camping in the desert to try and view it. In 19 years when the Super Blue Blood Moon happens again, I may or may not be in a spot where I can observe it this clearly.

These natural events connect me to the grand story that started before me and will continue long after my life is over. They remind me that it's important to make time for them, to slow down, be present, and enjoy nature's show. I also have a new appreciation for the moon's geography that holds a record of it's pummeling by meteors and lava flows across its surface, revealed in the low light of the eclipse. My husband and I have shared experiences, even in this busy time of life, fun times in nature together.

What natural events have you attended? Did they change you? Were there any that you skipped, either on purpose or inadvertently? Do you have any regrets about missing them?