Lunar Eclipse

For those of you who love astronomy, tonight is a lunar eclipse! I found this out quite randomly while I was investigating the chance for snow tomorrow (10%) and Christmas day (50%!). It begins tonight, or really Tuesday morning at 1:33am. The Earth will appear as a red dot against the full moon, and over an hour, will completely envelope it. (Science refresher: lunar eclipse-when the sun, Earth and moon are completely in line, with the Earth in the middle blocking the sun from hitting the moon.) For 72 minutes the moon will be in a coppery red shadow. Sounds super cool. I have to say I didn't understand why it is red well enough to paraphrase so I'll give you this:

"Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway. You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it's not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth's circumference, you're seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once." (reference)

Now THAT is something I'd like to see. I'm going to add that to my Life Goals List. Oh, wait...except for the fact that the thought of going into space totally creeps me out. I don't know why. Something about leaving Earth, the only planet I've ever known, and going somewhere where human beings cannot naturally survive. A black void, with holes that suck you up and never spit you out. I'm just not sure I'm down with that. So maybe I'll just have to settle for one sun rise and sun set at a time.

PS-A lunar eclipse on the Winter Solstice is apparently pretty rare. The last time this happened was 1638! So get out of your beds and check it out.