Students’ eyes turn to lunar eclipse last week

     Up until last Monday evening I and most likely the majority of GCSU students and faculty, were oblivious to the fact that there was supposed to be a total lunar eclipse later that week on Wednesday night. Now, being the ecliptophile that I am, I was eager to let every one of my friends know about this exciting event. Well not really, but I was excited nevertheless.   As I anticipated the eclipse I spoke with a few Astronomy professors about what to expect and what the difference was between a total lunar eclipse and any other eclipse.
     Professor Donovan Domingue explained to me that “This eclipse will display the moon moving through the umbra portion of the Earth’s shadow. This is a total lunar eclipse and can only occur during a full moon. This does not occur during every full moon though, because of the specific tilt of the moon’s orbit.”
     With that information, I felt like I was set to observe this phenomenal show take place.
     Wednesday night a group of us went out to a friends dock on Lake Sinclair to watch the first astronomical show of the year. My eyes were aimed at the sky and they were definitely in for a treat. It was pretty cold that night but we were determined to view the spectacle.
     The eclipse began exactly at 8:43 p.m., but the colorful brilliance didn’t occur until half way through the eclipse at about 10:01 p.m. The moon went through dramatically different colors from deep red, to harvest orange and then to dark brown until around 10:51 p.m.
     As my friends and I gazed up toward the stars, we sat in silence and just took in the beauty of the universe. Honestly, how often is it that we are able to witness phenomenal things like that, or how awesome is it to see the actual shape of the Earth reflected off of the moon? We weren’t the only people watching it, I’m sure of it. Over half the world was able to witness this eclipse. Students in South America and most of North America as well as Western Europe, Africa and Western Asia played witness along with us to one of the universe’s most extraordinary events that only happen twice a year at most.
     As the eclipse color changing came to an end, we all piled in the car and headed back into town. I couldn’t help but continue to watch as the moon slowly glided away from Earth’s shadow. I dropped everyone one off at their perspective houses and headed back to my apartment.
     When I walked towards my building, I noticed a girl sitting in a chair wrapped up in a blanket with her eyes gazing to the sky. I kind of smiled to myself and decided to ask her what she what she was doing outside in the cold. Sophomore Heather Wilson explained to me, “My astronomy teacher told us at the beginning of the semester that a total lunar eclipse would happen, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss it.”
     It was refreshing to see that others could be torn away from their usual Wednesday night entertainment to witness this spectacular event.
     If you weren’t able to watch the event last week, you are out of luck because the next visible total eclipse of the moon in North America won’t be until December 2010 according to NASA.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 29 2008. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry