By Anna Daniels
Lunar Eclipse April 15, 2014, California, Alfredo Garcia
Did you see the moon earlier this morning? At 3 am, when I rousted myself out of bed, it was already Part Deux of San Diego’s total lunar eclipse –the moon glowed a reddish umber behind the earth’s shadow. It was mysterious and somewhat confusing –the “rabbit” in the moon that was so clearly visible when I went to bed earlier had disappeared.
Holding coffee cups in one hand and binoculars in the other, My Beloved and I sat on the side of the house craning our necks upward. Watching an eclipse from start to finish is the cosmic equivalent of watching paint dry–long moments of nothing seeming to happen, then voila! the moon is occulted. Or it is whole again, a shining coin pulled from night’s pocket.
The term “blood moon” strikes me as an exaggeration, but perhaps nascent cataracts have cast time’s own dim umbra across my eyes. It took a while before I stopped channeling Neil de Grasse Tyson, who was providing a voice over inside of my head of how human beings have regarded eclipses as signs of the apocryphal. I can’t imagine what greater calamities the moon could possibly portend for us here on earth–we already seem up to our eyeballs in conquest, war, famine and death. I sat in the quasi-darkness of our side yard waiting for the rabbit to return.
The eclipse was the reason for getting up in the wee hours of the morning, but I was immediately struck by the number of constellations, stars and planets that I could see. The skies over City Heights are not velvety black at night like those I remember from island living or occasional visits to mountains and deserts. City Heights sits in the glowing heart of the city and residents here have gone to great lengths to further illuminate the darkness. Darkness has become a thing to be vanquished for its lack of usefulness or because it obscures lurking dangers.
But there was Orion, The Hunter and Sirius, the Dog Star. Directly over my head the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters. Rich points to the “V” forming the horns in Taurus, The Bull. While the moon was in total eclipse I could see Uranus through the binoculars. There was something thrilling about seeing the constellations, calling out their names. It was the thrill of remembering something too easily forgotten when darkness was vanquished.
Rebecca Solnit’s book “The Field Guide to Getting Lost” contains an essay devoted to the topic of darkness. It is a reminder of how humans have oriented themselves literally and metaphorically in terms of the cosmic dualities of day and night. Neither navigation nor agriculture requires being attuned to nocturnal skies as they had in our not so distant past.
The moment when a child is able to connect certain stars and see a familiar shape provides both the thrill of discovery and the safety of the known. Do kids learn to pick out the constellations anymore? Can they even be in some place dark enough to see them? Last night I experienced the pure joy of rediscovering a forgotten language. As an adult now, I realize that is not so much a matter of being a forgotten language but rather a language that cannot be used very often. There is a difference.
Solnit writes that the places we come to know, and darkness can be one one of them, “become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you.”
Last night I was possessed by stars and planets– and a lunar eclipse.
Editor Note: In the rush to publish, I forgot to add the song that immediately came to mind when I first looked upward.
Have You Seen the Stars Tonight/Starship Jefferson Starship
Anna Daniels
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The sky over San Diego has been magnificent over the past few days:
**The flaming clouds at sunset,
**the eclipse you so beautifully described, and
**a simply amazing moon-set into a growing bank of fog first thing this morning.
It’s almost as though the skies are doing their part to keep us entertained and upbeat as the land around us withers from drought.
Thanks for writing this.
At first I thought you had reposted my lunar eclipse http://obrag.org/?p=87873
Anna, yours was much more poetic.
And btw, I don’t know why I can’t post in my real name.
I was also up around 3 or so. Happy to see earlier clouds had cleared off. Winter constellations coming up, as you’ve noted. Orion, and brilliant Sirius. Capella and “the kids” overhead, along with Aldeberan and the rest of Taurus. Castor and Pollux (Gemini) just clearing the rooftops in NE. But too early yet for glimpse of Canopus, which I always look forward to every year. (What makes that star special? You’ll have to look it up! Hint: it has something in common with Sirius…)
And, yep, up high there, was the equivalent of a half-Moon – at a time of night that would otherwise be impossible for one. Dark half VERY dark. And, what’s truly amazing about that? That’s Earth’s shadow – that’s us!! We’re doing that…
Proof again the night sky’s the greatest show going…
Ah, another star-gazer! I so much enjoy it, especially for the sense of perspective it provides me. A question I enjoy posing that sort of highlights the way our quotidian mindset so easily tunes out the heavens: how far can one see with the naked eye? Typical responses are framed in the context of the curvature of the earth and the limit that imposes on objects at the horizon. At night, though, in the right place and time of year, the Andromeda Galaxy is visible to the naked eye at a distance of 2.5 million light-years! (And yes, a light-year is a measure of distance, not time; 2.5 million light-years is roughly 158 billion times the distance from the earth to the sun!) (And you can probably tell how animated I get thinking about these things by the number of exclamation points !! I toss in.)
In the rush to publish I forgot to include the song Have You Seen the Stars Tonight by Jefferson Starship. It’s there at the end–enjoy some time travel!
I wish I had your mind, Anna, as I was singing Moon Shadow by Cat Stevens (who later changed his name to …. c’mon Rich, help me out here)
editordude at OB Rag, as you shall henceforth be known, my brain is completely fried from being up so early, so be careful what you wish for… And Rich sez Yusuf Islam. Your welcome. ;)
Anna– So beautiful. I especially loved your phrase about the moon coming back like a coin in night’s pocket. Am so sorry I didn’t get up to check it out. But your story kind of made up for it!
Editordude — Probably you can’t post in your own name because Porter has put you under advisement or probation or something martial and conditional.
As for Anna Daniels — really nice report. I was sleeping through the beauty. Thank you.
Steve and I sat on the back deck , me in my down sleeping bag and he in his winter jacket. At 9200 feet at night the air is thin and cold and the sky is dark. Not like Clairton skies. We looked at the “rusty” moon and constellations and the Milky Way and one renegade shooting star. He has since purchased a telescope and the next eclipse will be viewed close up. Reliving his childhood. So glad we didn’t have to get up at 5 to go to work.