Cosmic Log
It’s no hoax: Mars is bigger and brighter in the night sky than it’s been at any time since 2003. And you can watch the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century.
There are caveats, of course: The only way folks in North America can see Friday’s eclipse is to watch it online. And Mars won’t look anywhere near as big as the moon, despite what’s been claimed in a hoax that dates back to, um, 2003.
Nevertheless, this weekend’s astronomical double-header is not to be missed.
Cloudy weather blocked Seattle’s view of the “super blue blood moon” early today — but as a consolation, skywatchers from Vancouver to Siberia shared their images of the total lunar eclipse.
Total lunar eclipses arise when Earth’s shadow falls fully over the moon, and the long-wavelength light that’s refracted by our planet’s atmosphere turns the full moon’s disk a sunset-like shade of red.
The event received an extra burst of hype because it took place during a time when the moon is closer to Earth than usual (qualifying by some definitions as a “supermoon”), and because it was the second full moon in the course of a month (a so-called “blue moon”).
Putting all these features together results in the super-blue-blood label, which NASA readily adopted. “Sounds like an opportunity for vampires,” University of Washington astronomer Julie Lutz joked.
Whatever you call it, the lunar eclipse is totally worth a recap …
Geographically speaking, the Pacific Northwest is one of the best places in America to see tonight’s super-hyped total lunar eclipse. Meteorologically speaking? Not so much.
Seattleites might have to go as far east as Ellensburg to get a clear view of what’s touted as a “super blue blood moon.” And in reality, the moon won’t be bloody, or blue, or even all that super.
Before we go into full sour-grapes mode, let’s acknowledge that if there’s a chance of seeing the full moon fade to red between 4:51 a.m. and 6:07 a.m. PT Jan. 31, it’s definitely worth getting out of bed.
“Set your alarm early and go out and take a look,” NASA’s Gordon Johnson says in the space agency’s preview of the eclipse.
Get the full story on GeekWire.
The first total solar eclipse to go across America from coast to coast in 99 years has to rank as the top space story of 2017. But where do you go from there?
Would you believe the moon?
The moon was a supporting player in this year’s brush with totality. After all, you can’t have a solar eclipse unless the new moon gets in the way. And it certainly held center stage for a phenomenon witnessed by an estimated 215 million. That’s abigger audience than the Super Bowl gets on TV.
But in 2018, the moon really gets its day in the sun, figuratively speaking. It starts next month with a New Year’s Day supermoon, followed by a total lunar eclipse on Jan. 31.
We lay out other reasons to moon over the moon in our annual roundup of the five top space stories from the year that’s ending, plus five trends to watch in the year ahead.
A medical case reported today in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology proved the wisdom of all those warnings not to stare at the partly covered sun during August’s solar eclipse.
Unfortunately, it’s too late for the woman at the center of the case: Now she has a permanent scar in her left eye’s retina, and a permanent black spot in her field of vision.
More than 215 million American adults, representing almost 88 percent of the U.S. population over 18, watched August’s solar eclipse in person and on screens, according to a newly published survey.
That’s nearly twice the size of the TV viewership for recent Super Bowl football championships.
“This level of public interest and engagement with a science-oriented event is unparalleled,” Jon Miller, director of the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, said in a news release.
Miller’s preliminary study, conducted in cooperation with NASA, was based on online and phone surveys involving a nationwide, representative sample of 2,221 adults.
A South Carolina couple has filed a lawsuit against Amazon, claiming that they suffered eye damage even though they used protective glasses sold through the online retailer.
In the lawsuit, filed Aug. 29 in U.S. District Court in Charleston, S.C., Thomas Corey Payne and his fiancee, Kayla Harris, say that the glasses were defective and that Amazon was negligent in allowing them to be sold. They also accuse Amazon of unfair and deceptive trade practices.
They’re asking the court to grant the lawsuit class-action status, which could let other customers across the country join in the effort to seek as-yet unspecified damages. They’re also asking for a jury trial.
GeekWire reporters and correspondents documented the 2017 solar eclipse from the Pacific Northwest, including our home base in Seattle and locations in the “Path of Totality” in Oregon. Follow our eclipse adventures, including the mysterious case of the plane and the corona, in our running live blog.
This week’s total solar eclipse ranked among history’s most widely documented celestial events, thanks to streaming video and social media. NASA and its media partners announced today that 12.1 million unique viewers watched the spectacle via NASA.gov’s live stream, and millions more saw it by other means – including their own cameras and their own eyes.
Most of the pictures focused on the blacked-out sun and the delicate corona surrounding the disk, but there were lots of other perspectives on the first coast-to-coast, all-American total eclipse to take place in 99 years.
Not everything turned out the way pre-teen sisters Rebecca and Kimberly Yeung expected when they sent their Loki Lego Launcher balloon platform into the shadow of a solar eclipse. But that in itself was a big lesson for the stratospheric science team from Seattle.
The Yeung family – including 12-year-old Rebecca and 10-year-old Kimberly as well as their parents, Winston and Jennifer Yeung – drove westward from the launch site in Wyoming after the Aug. 21 eclipse and were due back in Seattle late tonight.
“There are many lessons that we learned, and we are continuing to talk about them as we continue our long drive home (our car ride home always seems to be our mission debrief session),” the girls wrote today on their blog.
The total solar eclipse was a teachable moment for the Yeungs as well as other citizen scientists participating in the Eclipse Ballooning Project.