The "Outta Leftfield" Weblog


Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Not moonstruck by lunar eclipse

I just happened to be awake for the total lunar eclipse early Tuesday morning so I thought I’d take a look. Unfortunately, the rare event, which hadn’t happened in 372 years, wasn’t visible from the comfort of my home, so I stepped outside onto the back deck for the show.
My first impressions about a rare total lunar eclipse that coincides with the winter solstice:
(1) It’s really cold on my back deck in mid-December.
(2) Rare total lunar eclipses don’t move very quickly at all.
(3) It’s really, really cold on my back deck in mid-December. In fact, it's not fit for witches or brass monkeys.
I snuck out right at 12:30 a.m., looked toward the heavens and saw . . . the moon, doing absolutely nothing. By 12:34 a.m. I was back inside reading some more about what I was supposed to be seeing while I was freezing my patootie off on the back deck.
What I learned about watching an eclipse appeared to be simple enough: Go outside and look up. I did that. Nothing happened.
So I waited until 12:55 a.m., bundled up, went back outside on the back deck, looked up . . . and nothing was still happening, only this time there appeared to be a lot more it.
Back inside I got on the laptop to study some more. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it would have been nice if a cow jumped over the moon or maybe a silhouette of Santa and the team warming up in the bullpen with a couple of moon fly-bys.
By 1:20 a.m., I returned to the deck, looked up, and saw . . . nothing. I didn’t even get a nod of acknowledgement from the man and the moon. By that point, I was convinced that science geeks had made up the whole thing just to get me onto the back deck in my pajamas in sub-freezing temperatures.
Well, the plan worked to perfection. Fortunately, this phenomenon won’t again until Dec. 21, 2094. By then, I will have forgotten this experience and probably fall for the whole thing again.

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Location: Fort Washington, Pennsylvania

Mike Morsch has been executive editor of Montgomery Newspapers since 2003. His award-winning humor column "Outta Leftfield" has been recognized by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, the Suburban Newspapers of America and the Philadelphia Press Association.

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