Pause and look up at a glowing ring in the sky. You’ve been waiting for this. It’s an eclipse.
As the sun goes down behind you, a red moon will rise before your eyes. Rising moons are often reddened by clouds or pollution, but this moon will be the deep, extraordinary red only seen during a lunar eclipse. As you watch it ascend into the night, imagine what it would be like to stand by Shackleton Crater watching from the opposite direction.
Up in the sky, a big black disk covers the sun. A red “ring of fire” appears where the sun was only moments before, and its glow turns the ground red beneath your feet.
The charm of the eclipse comes from Earth. Our planet is big enough by a factor of three to block the entire sun but, curiously, this doesn’t cause complete darkness. Rays of sunlight bend around the edge of Earth, filtering through the atmosphere. Rising moons are often reddened by clouds or pollution, but this moon was the deep, extraordinary red only seen during a lunar eclipse. As you watched it ascend into the night, imagine what it would be like to stand by Shackleton Crater watching from the opposite direction.
To our ancestors, there were no two more important objects in the sky than the Sun and Moon. They represented the rhythms of life itself. They feared lunar eclipses, thinking it might even be the end of the world. Embedded in the fear was also fascination and wonder. Today we know why eclipses occur, but understanding did not take away the wonder and beauty of this shadow play of Earth and Moon. Join us in an exploration of our nearest neighbor in space, and the only other world that man has walked upon.
