The last time humanity ventured out of low Earth orbit (LEO) was in December 1972. The Apollo 17 mission, last in the series, took Gene Cernan, Jack Schmitt, and Ron Evans to the moon, where Cernan and Schmitt spent a…
Category: The Moon
Supermoon!!
A short post about something that is all over the news now. No, not the election. I’m talking about the latest “supermoon”. This is a term I don’t believe I had ever heard before about five years ago. I don’t…
Tagged with: Supermoon
Total Lunar Eclipse
In the early pre-dawn morning hours of Tuesday, April 15th, most of the Western Hemisphere will witness a total lunar eclipse. Totality (when the Earth completely blocks the Sun as seen from the Moon) begins at 3:07 am EDT and…
Tagged with: total lunar eclipse
Full Moons: Not So Super?
A friend: “Hey, did you see that blue moon last night?” Me: “Uh, yeah, I went outside and took a peek.” (Even if I didn’t.) Look, don’t misunderstand. I’m all for anything that gets people outside and looking at the…
Once In A Blue Moon
I must confess that I am puzzled by people who ask me if I am excited about a “blue moon”—commonly understood to mean a second full moon in the same calendar month. It’s nice and big and bright, but it…
Tagged with: blue moon
Super Moons
One of the key lessons of astronomy (and perhaps of life itself) is that what you see very much depends on where you are. Consider for example this image of the moon passing in front of Saturn. Saturn is of…
Total Lunar Eclipse
Early in the morning of Tuesday, December 21st (barring clouds), a total lunar eclipse will be visible to all of North America. This takes place when the Earth slides between the sun and the fully illuminated moon, casting its shadow…
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