Total Lunar Eclipse, Jan. 20th, 2019: The Blood Moon

In general, I don’t get overly excited about eclipses or sunsets, there being so many other intriguing and less trendy celestial objects to observe. Still, when I’m feeling sufficiently motivated, I’m not one to miss out on any astronomical phenomena. Mousie has also been encouraging me to blog about something 'interesting' that 'everyone might enjoy', so we made plans to observe and report on the last total lunar eclipse of this decade.

Sadly, all last week was kind of rainy. It was particularly wet on Sunday night, and we only got a few quick glimpses between fast-moving clouds… mostly after totality had passed. A good storm on its own might have been almost as good, however, despite some dramatic predictions in the local weather reports, the storm not only obscured the main event, but also underwhelmed.

To avoid exposing my frayed furs to the elements, I snapped a couple of quick photos through the window on my cell phone and we ended up watching most of the eclipse via the Griffith Observatory’s livestream.

No matter, Mousie’s crayon renderings of the event convey our experience better than my photography could. She believes that experiences are heightened when captured through drawing. In regards to memory retention, there seems to be some scientific validity to this practice, so, I go with it. If there’s anything I’ve learned about Mousie, it’s to trust her intuition.

While witnessing the eclipse progress into totality on livestream, and emerge from Mousie’s crayons, these words from the late and great Carl Sagan came to mind:

P.S., In an ironic twist, this was the sky the immediate morning after the long, rainy week, and stormy night of the eclipse (also later interpreted by Mousie in crayon):

Above, to the right: “VERY BLOOO Sky Day” - January 21, 2019, 'bloo crayon on VERY BLOO strukshin paper', plein air drawing by Mousie.