Last week’s eclipse was a hit

Mike Zacek of Spring Lake, Michigan, wrote me very early in the morning on Thursday, Feb. 21: “Unbelievable, the sky in West Michigan was clear and the air was crisp and we had great conditions for viewing the eclipse from start to finish. It was great!”

I wouldn’t know because since early January I’ve been in Vermont and Quebec with my family enjoying a sabbatical from my regular duties at Grand Valley State University.

I was able to see parts of the eclipse from Burlington, Vermont, through holes in a mostly cloudy sky. The copper-red moon was beautiful hanging high in the sky above Mt. Mansfield and Camel’s Back, two prominent peaks in the Green Mountains of Northern Vermont.

Other reports of the eclipse have trickled in to me over the past twelve hours from friends and family around North America.

Via a telephone link from Burlington to Punta Gorda, Florida, my parents described a mostly cloudy sky that miraculously cleared just when the moon was almost totally eclipsed. My parents, as happy as adolescent astronomers, couldn’t talk with me long – they had to get their telescope setup in the driveway. They got that from me. Not the telescope, but the urge to set one up in the yard on a moment’s notice.

Also via a telephone link I heard from my wife and mother-in-law from the town of St. Sauveur in the Laurentian Mountains about 30 miles north of Montreal, Quebec. They were not as enthusiastic as my parents: they watched the eclipsed moon through the living room window of the condo by the ski hill. But who can blame them, it was like 5 degrees above zero (Fahrenheit). My almost-five-year-old Son Simon, regrettably, was asleep.

And from Providence, Rhode Island, a long-time friend Charlie wrote by e-mail late in the evening: “I just came in from viewing the giant red orb; it looks like Mars is so close it appears to be the size of a full moon! You can see the energizer canals.” One is never too sure what the Universe looks like through Charlie’s eyes.

The eclipse was a hit “from Persia to Hawaii,” according to Dr. Tony Phillips, author of the popular website spaceweather.com. Visit his site for a most interesting interactive world map of eclipse photos.

And speaking of hits: for whatever reason, the U.S. Navy took advantage of the dark sky during the eclipse to take a missile shot at failed spy satellite 150 miles above the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. The satellite, which was due to crash to earth on its own in early March, was shredded to fragments by the speeding missile.

If you watched the eclipse, you must have noticed the two bright stars near the moon. To the left of the moon was the planet Saturn and above the moon was the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo. Saturn will be ideally suited for viewing for the next few weeks; I’ll write more about Saturn next week.

If you missed Wednesday’s eclipse, unfortunately you’ll have to wait a couple of years to see another one. While there are several penumbral and partial lunar eclipses each year, the next total lunar eclipse visible from North America isn’t until Dec. 21, 2010.

Look for a new post here on or about 2 March 2008.