Moonstruck
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
I DIDN’T HEAR Heather sneak out of bed early Sunday. So it wasn’t until later that I learned her favorite shooting stars had been firing blanks.
Heather’s a fan of the Perseid meteor shower that hits the skies each August. I can’t blame her. The one time I got to watch it with her in Garden City, just after returning from a long trip, was a show Steven Spielberg would have been proud of. Streaks of light here, there everywhere — it wasn’t a meteor shower, it was an out-and-out downpour.
Alas, more conventional meteorology chose to rain on my wife’s parade Sunday. Too many clouds, not enough open sky and too long after the peak period. Too bad.
But if the fates are kind, we’ll still have the moon.
For those of you who missed it (and I almost did), a total lunar eclipse was set to begin around 3:51 a.m. this morning, blocking out the moon entirely an hour later. As of this writing, I was plotting my anti-rain dance, trying to temporarily hold off our admittedly needed moisture until after the big event has come and gone.
I can’t help myself. I’m a lunar-tic. A space nut. A star-k raving maniac. And from past experience, I know I’ve got a lot of company.
For me, it began in childhood. Around first- or second-grade, my class learned how to build pinhole cameras out of Quaker oatmeal drums. This is probably a low-demand skill now, in these days of cell-phone snapshots, but at the time it was a lot of fun messing around with glue and aluminum and photo paper to build something that would actually take a picture — well, given several seconds of exposure, anyway.
Part of the reason all this was being stressed was that we were due to have a solar eclipse that year. One of the few safe ways to watch an eclipse, of course, is through a pinhole projector. Just throw the “shadow” of the eclipse onto a flat surface and you can watch all you want without burning your eyes out. You can even take a few pictures for posterity.
None of us were Ansel Adams. Our pictures from the eclipse were mostly fuzzy and indistinct. But I was fascinated. The idea that you could watch something like this happening amazed me.
It still does.
I never really stopped looking up. As a boy, I’d get up in the middle of the night with Dad to watch a lunar eclipse or to see the moon turn red after the Mount Saint Helens eruption. As a graduate student, I stood in the driveway with Dad passing binoculars back and forth so we could get a better look at Hale-Bopp, which is still the coolest comet I have ever seen in my life. In between was magic and mystery and imagination, a world of possibilities still not fully explored.
Samuel Johnson used to say that whoever was tired of London, was tired of life. I feel the same way about the great beyond. One of the best qualities of the space program has been its ability to turn so many of us into little kids again, watching a small vehicle tool around Mars or a teacher (at last!) turning a space shuttle into her own classroom. Anything that can excite wonder in a world that is so often jaded should not be dismissed lightly.
By the time you read this, the moon’s great performance will have come and gone (along with a couple of hours of lost sleep, in my case). But take a step outside tonight anyway. Look up. There’s beauty to be found there.
And while the Perseids may have more or less wrapped up for the year, there’s supposed to be some really spectacular stuff coming up around Friday when the Aurigid meteors hit the neighborhood. There may be just enough time before dawn to see them if the weather forecast is just right.
Look for clear skies, with a chance of showers.
Scott Rochat’s e-mail address is rochat@emporiagazette.com.