Eclipse

There was a fantastic and very long total eclipse of the moon last night, best seen in Melbourne and the longest period of totality for the next thousand years. The sky was clear and dry, the weather freezing cold, the stars bright enough to burn, as I watched the brilliant full moon gradually being consumed by the shadow of the earth.I had the telescope out and I watched as the blinding disk slowly darkened and took on the ghostly red color of earthlight. I watched the eerie spectre slowly tracking across the background of the Milky Way, occulting several stars. And right on the limb of the shadow of the earth, just to spoil it all, you could see the shadow of some bastard in South Africa making bunny ears.