Eclipse? What Eclipse? We had An Eclipse?
WE WERE ALL SET ON SUNDAY NIGHT to watch the Super-Duper, High Octane, Bloody Eclipse. I made popcorn. We had a Thermos of hot tea, and I even cleaned the windshield on the car.
It rained.
The Weather App on my phone said that we would have clear skies. It was going to be the Cosmic Light Show of the Decade.
It rained.
The squirrels in the back yard were lining up two by two, jostling to get to the head of the queue. Someone said that they had heard that an Ark was seen moving upriver.
It freaking rained.
My plans had been to take some really stupendous pictures of the ominous, and potentially a portent, Red Moon. It would look like the cover on a paperback Sci-Fi/Fantasy/ Sword and Sorcerer/Romance novel. Fabio turned down my offer to come to Terre Haute (That’s French for, “Why does the moon look like a nasty bruise?). I offered to put him up at the Holiday Inn Express (free complimentary breakfast) and all he could eat at Square Donuts.
He turned me down saying that he would rather have another roller coaster head-on with a duck.
Anyway, it rained.
I wanted him to come here and pose with the Eclipse over his beefy shoulders. I thought it would look good as the graphic for today’s blog posting. I’m sorry people. I tried, but I was up against Hollywood or Madison Avenue, or Harlequin Books, or some faceless, nameless monolith that doesn’t appreciate a good donut offer. Oh, well, his loss – our gain.
Instead, and because of the overcast and rainy conditions, we offer something even classier. I contacted a local artist and hired him to do an exclusive Artist’s Rendition of Sunday’s Eclipse. That’s it up there near the top of this posting.
Notice the authentic coloring on the moon – showing the reflected light from Earth. The light was red because it had been bounced around a bit. It was sunlight that bounced off of the moon, then to earth, then back to the moon and, finally, back to Earth a second time and into your eyeballs. I’d be a little flushed too if I had to make a trip like that. There’s a lot of Mathematics in calculating all of that – and some Arithmetic too, but no Algebra. I took two years of Algebra and I still haven’t used it.
Our Artist’s Rendition captures some of the nuances of this Heavenly Apparition. I think that showing the Earth in the foreground helps put it in perspective and to know where you were on Sunday if you weren’t sure.
As you can tell by looking at our Exclusive Artist’s Rendition – it shows the eclipse when it was still in a partial phase and not when it was in a Total Phase. Our artist chose to do it this way to show the contrast between light and dark areas of the moon’s surface and, since the Total Phase wasn’t going to happen until well after 10 PM. Sunday was a School Night as well and he had to be home by 9:30 PM.
Our goal is to bring you the best we can afford at all times and we had planned to give you some really fantastic, whiz-bang, mind blowing pictures of the eclipse –
But it rained.
Down the Hall on Your Left 