The darkening of the moon

When I was a child at boarding school, I never slept well when the moon was full. Was I a werewolf? Well, no (I bet you’re reassured about that), but small boys are often superstitious. We had heard (from whom does one hear these things?) that you would go mad if you stared at the full moon through glass. We half believed it. Sort of. Anyway, I’m sure that my inability to sleep at full moon had more to do with the absence of curtains over our dormitory windows than with madness or nascent lycanthropy.

At about half past ten last night, we saw something that would, in former times, have prompted superstitious fears. A dark shadow crept slowly across the face the full moon, until the moon was now more than a dim coppery disk in the sky. A total eclipse of the moon, as the earth comes directly between the sun and the moon and casts its shadow on the moon’s surface is less dramatic than a total eclipse of the sun. But it is awe-inspiring, nonetheless.

I tried to take a picture. My digital camera fired its flashgun vainly into the sky. I turned the flash off and pushed the zoom button until the lens had extended as far as it would go, but really! How could I think to take a decent picture with a small camera held by wobbly hands of an object some 400 million kilometres away? A triumph of vain hope over the ineluctable laws of physics, I think.

So there’s no picture here, but there is one in the BBC story. And there are some wonderful pictures here.

By the way, the last total eclipse of the sun visible in the British Isles took place on 11 August 1999. Erica and I were at the Baha’i Academy for the Arts, which was taking place at the Quaker school in Sidcot in Somerset (not far from Cheddar). Everybody was outside at around 11 a.m., as the eclipse approached totality. Unfortunately it was a cloudy day, so we couldn’t see the eclipse clearly (standard warning: do not look directly at the sun, even in eclipse!), but we all fell quiet as the gloom deepened into a strange half light.

Of course, it is an astronomical event with a well understood physical explanation. But I can understand why people who had no notion of physics or astronomy were fearful of the daytime darkening of the sun, why they attached superstitious significance to it. Even now, an eclipse inspires awe and wonder.

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