February 19, 2008
Total Eclipse of the Moon Tomorrow
Forget Valentine's Day. Tomorrow is when the real romantic night of the month arrives — when three celestial bodies align in a display of astronomical brilliance, easily viewed from two deck chairs in the privacy of your own backyard.
Wednesday night at 8:43 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the lunar eclipse will begin as the moon travels into Earth's shadow, reaching totality (the moment it is fully in shadow) at 10:01 p.m. Totality lasts for approximately 50 minutes, and then the moon will tread fully out of our shadow at just after midnight. We're luckier in D.C. than our friends over on the West Coast -- they'll completely miss the beginning of the eclipse, since it will occur before the moon rises there. We get the full show on the East Coast (along with Western Europe and Africa), but there's other bad news -- the weather may really suck tomorrow, possibly involving snow and rain storms.
If we can get a little bit of clear sky, the sight should be amazing. When the moon passes out of the yellow light from the sun, it will turn shades of orange and red, brown and gray, as the sunlight is filtered through Earth's (dirty and chemical-filled) atmosphere and reflected onto the moon's surface during totality. You don't need to be anywhere special to view the eclipse; as long as you can get a mostly unobstructed view of the upper Eastern sky, you can watch pleasantly on your lawn or roofdeck, if you have one. The moon will continue to rise during the eclipse and will be near zenith (straight up) as it ends. To the lower left of the moon you can also see Saturn.
You can see the colors change nicely with your naked eye, but a decent pair of binoculars will give you a good view of the moon's craters. Telescope owners should use a low powered eyepiece, while photographers should use at least a 400mm lens and a tripod (this is a useful site on how best to capture lunar eclipses). We expect to see lots of amazing shots in the DCist pool tomorrow.
Although we were lucky to have two total eclipses last year, do your best to catch this one, as it will be the last we'll see until December 2010.
Photo by maxedaperture
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Cool! BabyRat is obsessed with the Moon, so we may have to let her stay up late to see some of this.
Total Eclipse of the Heart Today.
As long as it does its thing by Project Runway.
P.S. - Does anyone else see the Xenu-mobile in that photo?
I've heard that if you watch a lunar eclipse while playing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, it synchs up in significant ways. Can anyone confirm this?
Also, there is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact it's all dark.
stole my line, monkey...
As long as it does its thing by Project Runway.
it's the reunion episode this week anyways. boo.
oh i'm looking forward to the reunion show. i wanna know how jack's doing!!
I am going to be mooning my neighbors from 10 until 11 tonight, so that there will still be a recognizable marker in the sky.
Oh right, reunion episode. I know I can't wait to hear from the likes of Carmen (like the opera) or Victorya. Although the preview did promise a little humble pie being fed to the latter...
I'm just hoping that someone punches Christian in his smug little face!
That would be soooo ferosh!
the reunion show is supposed to determine the winner of chris/rami so i've heard...
fierce!
ugh! can't they save the reunion for the end like every other reailty show? lame. i do agree that christian's face needs a good punching. by tim. would pay to see that.
word on the street is that they all showed at fashion week as not to provide spoilers for the runway-obsessed amongst us. so i'm not exactly sure how that is going to play out on the show. i hope fat chris wins, since he's the only likable one left in the bunch.
Don't hate on Ferocia Coutura!
IF you go on the project runway website on bravotv.com (why would you ever browse anywhere but dcist), you can see all 5 collections. They've been up since the wrestling episode was over.
I'm pulling for either Chris or Jillian; the former because he's so likable, the latter because I'm wondering if she'd show any emotion if she won. I kinda have a running bet on it.
@ fist: at first i liked jillian because she's cute, but then it became readily apparent that she has either been lobotomized or is whacked out on xanax. go fat chris!
I've been slowly developing a crush on Jillian over the course of the show. She's got a rad body.