I woke up at 0030 hrs this morning, after hitting the sack early at 9 pm last night. The motivation was to awake at 0130 hrs on 16 June 2011 and set-up by NexStar reflector telescope and 200mm telezoom Sony a850 to capture what promised to be the longest full moon eclipse for the next 18 years. For a moment, the moon, which began losing its perfect disc of light rather early, was becoming quite well doused in the earth's shadow by 0230 hrs. Unfortunately, huddled in a deeply dark spot near my flat and with two sets of tripods with equipment mounted atop and pointing south-west into the sky above, I looked like a hapless ET hopeful, or a dorky nerd with a cosmological fantasy.
But it turned out to be a long and futile wait, as the skies remained ruddy pink and despite the strong wind, strove wilfully to shroud the sight of the blood red moon from me and my equipment. So, even with the best might and preparedness, one hapless observer could only note the local meteorological details, and virtually nothing of the orbital delight that was unfolding above the shrouds of cloud overhead.
I will have to await the news reports tomorrow to see what I missed, and the only consolation I got was getting online and looking at my Google homepage. The middle "O" was a large moon, waxing slightly, and below the brand was a sliding bar which moved from left to right, and as it did so, the moon was hid in shadow, turned ruddy red with the finest deep burgundy wine, and then unabashedly lost its dark and returned to its silvery light.
I found myself smiling,and actually silly but actualised, just being caught offguard and surprised by the people at Google for doing what they did.
For this grown up little boy, it was quite good, and almost the same thing, even if was not the real thing at all. It was about being surprised and observing an ancient phenomenon which is also rare.
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