Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Moon Struck







Having missed seeing Mars the closest it will ever be in our lifetime, E and I watched the lunar eclipse this morning first from the lanai and then the front yard until we could see the moon no longer.

The pictures are not the best but I did get a good sequence of the first part of the eclipse. The moon has gone below the horizon here so we'll have to watch the second half of this on tv.

When I was younger, I remember wanting to be an astronomer. The mystery of the sky, the stars, the moon...lured me! My grandmother bought me a star gazer. It was two paper discs secured by a grommet in the middle. I would align the two with the night sky and could locate constellations. I even saw my first satellite standing on the blvd. in front of my grandmother's house the first summer the Russians put it in orbit. I bought another one a couple of years back at Barnes and Noble but have no idea what happened to it. Lost in the move, perhaps.

E shares my love of the night sky and we've been known to jump in the car very early in the morning to drive away from city lights, park and watch a meteor shower. It was easier to do in Ft. Myers than St. Louis as we could roam down to the dock, coffee mug in hand and star gaze.

7 comments:

Tya said...

What great pictures Jules. :-)

crazydarla said...

SO cool! My pix are pale in comparison but show the red much much more... just not as close up as yours. I'll have to tinker with them when I get them off the camera and see what I end up with.
Thanks so much for sharing, it was an awesome sight!
Darla

:Jayne said...

Thanks for sharing the pics. It was tooo cloudy here!

:Jayne

Pam in Moncton said...

Nice! It's hard to get pics of something like that. I always enjoy star-gazing as well but I tend to forget most of the constellations. I sometimes stayed up late as a kid to see the meteor showers and never did see much of anything. Too much ight where I lived I think (Montreal).
Pam

owensmith said...

You need to be here for the eclipses, etc. I live in the country and not to many lights . or we could go to DH's home place, it is really out in the country.
You really do need to make a trip this way, Feb. is much to far away. We will have to try to work something out before then.
Just me :]

Cindy Marchant said...

Jules, fantastic pics!!!!!

madelineas said...

Great pictures Jules.