A tale of the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon

Once upon a time there was a life-inhabited planet called Earth. Earth was a happy little planet until the superior life forms of that planet began to destroy it (but that's another tale which may someday be told on this blog). Apart from Earth's slow destruction, it continued to interact with the other celestial bodies in its home, also known as its solar system. This interaction is the same as it was many many many many years ago when the Earth was first born. Earth revolves around its source of life-sustaining energy, also known as its Sun. Earth wanted a way to keep track of how old it is so it came up with a great idea... when Earth made it round the Sun once it would call that 1 year. Earth also noticed that while revolving slowly around the Sun, it also spun like a top. So Earth decided to call each full spin 1 day. Earth noticed that while it spun only half of its body saw the light from the Sun at a time... so it also decided that each day would be broken up into daytime (when it saw the Sun's light) and nightime (when it was dark). Well, things were going well for Earth's new concept of time, but Earth noticed a small ball that showed itself to the part of its body that was in the dark (nightime). Earth decided to watch what this small ball did. After 27 days Earth could see that this small ball went through phases. At the beginning it would be super big and bright but then the ball would slowly start to disappear bit by bit over several nights as if something was eating it from one side until it was completely gone. Earth felt very sad for the small ball and decided to name it Moon and swore to always remember how lovely it had once been. Well, to Earth's suprise Moon hadn't been eaten at all; after a couple nights it slowly started coming back in small bits just the way it had left. Earth was soo happy to see Moon again and decided that the time it took for Moon to disappear and reappear would be called 1 month. This was good because there was a big difference between 1 year (when Earth made it once around the Sun) and 1 day (when Earth spun around once); now there was something to measure time between the two. After time, Earth could see that during Moon's 1 month cycle it was actually revolving around Earth! Earth was very pleased and swore to be life-long friends with Moon.

Well, this story continues... every once in a while, when Moon is full, Earth's shadow covers it so that you can no longer see Sun's light bouncing off Moon. Earth decided to call this a lunar eclipse. And here is the tale of one of those superior life forms viewing one of these lunar eclipses from an island on Earth....

Everyone who knows me well knows that I am a science nerd, escpecially when it comes to astronomy... so it shouldn't surprise you that the fact that there was a total lunar eclipse Saturday night with perfect visibility for this part of the world got me pretty excited. In fact, I'd emailed pretty much all of the St Andrews community as well as our friends in London informing them that they were required to allow their kids to stay up late to view this celestial event. :-) Jeff and I took the short walk to the East Sands and set up our chairs. We were decked out with many layers of clothing, binoculars, and camera (the three essentials). It was soo quiet because the tide was very very low due to the alignment of the Sun, Earth, and Moon (this is known as a Spring tide). The beach was a perfect viewing spot as there are absolutely no lights around to obsure the intensity of the moon's light as well as the stars. In this setting, the full moon was extremely bright and the stars were incredible! The pictures show the Earth's shadow covering the moon. It took a little over an hour for the Earth's umbral shadow to completely cover the moon. We had a hard time getting good pictures... it was frustrating because it just didn't feel like the pictures did justice to how awesome it actually was. We ran into our neighbors who were also viewing the eclipse due to the email I sent out. :-) They have two boys (11 and 15) who, to my delight, were very interested in science but didn't know a whole lot about astronomy.
There is truly nothing better than seeing the look on a kid's face when you tell them that the stars are little suns really really far away or that the star they are looking at is actually how it looked thousands of years ago and that it could be dead by now or that the moon itself doesn't actually produce light... I had a great time explaining seasons and why summer days are longer and winter days shorter using a football (soccer ball) and a flashlight. The most interesting fact of the evening was actually something Jeff had looked up on the internet. When the moon is in full eclipse it glows red; we found out that this is because some of the sunlight passes through the Earth's atmosphere and is bent around behind the Earth and towards the moon. The shorter wavelengths of light are scattered and only the longer orange and red wavelengths reach the moon. It is usually just enough light to cast a coppery red hue on the moon. When the moon is in full eclipse it is dark enough to see lots and lots of stars. We were also able to pick out Saturn using the binoculars... it just looked like another star but I knew where I was supposed to be looking to find out which one it was. As you can see from the length of this post, I found the whole event fascinating and am looking forward to the next total lunar eclipse on August 28th, which will be best viewed in the west of North America... that means California, baby!!! Oh yeah... we are soo having a lunar eclipse party!