Lessons from observing the lunar eclipse

Here are four lessons I learned from getting up early this morning to view the lunar eclipse:

• Sloppy is okay
• Sleep is bad
• Don't breathe
• Back up

SLOPPY IS OKAY
I got up at 4:30am MST to set up my telescope. I had it outside covered all night, but now I had to get it aligned and ready. I didn't bother trying to center either of the two alignment stars, choosing to accept wherever the telescope pointed. That worked out fine. The telescope tracked the moon perfectly, at least for visual observing.

SLEEP IS BAD
I knew I wasn't going to see any of the total eclipse. "Red Mountain Observatory" is a significant exaggeration of the term "observatory." It's just my telescope on wheels that I roll out to view. But Red Mountain is no figment of my imagination. It looms large in the west. As a result, I knew I would not see any of the totality. And I knew it was going to be cold, okay - cool (26 degrees f and 47% humidity). So I was considering sleeping through it.

Shadow & Substance

I posted a link to a great site the other day showing an animation for the upcoming lunar eclipse... and not just an animation, but one showing what it wold like from lots of locations. Plus, this site, called "Shadow & Substance," seems to regularly post a variety of astronomical animations.

I wanted to find out more about the creator of these animations and the person behind the Shadow & Substance website so I used "The Google" (have you heard about it?) to find out who he is. His name is Larry Koehn. Then I posted a link to his site at Stargazers Lounge and at Cloudy Nights and I emailed him to say thanks for his website and also asked him to tell me why he posts these animations.

Here's what he said. You can tell from how he wrote back how excited he is about astronomy. And isn't that what it's all about (sorry Kiefer Sutherland... you can kill yourself in the barn because you are melancholy about Melancholia, but we're just excited. Period.)

Total eclipse of the moon

I just found a great website called Shadow & Substance with a wonderful set of animations showing what the December 10, 2011 total eclipse of the moon will look like from a number of locations and at various times.

Even if you can't see the eclipse from your location, I recommend you check out this website. It looks like its creator, Larry Koehn, posts other astronomy animations periodically.