Wednesday night North Americans will witness the astronomical beauty of a total eclipse of the moon. The shadow of the Earth will loom over the full moon transmuting the pale orb into a sore red eye in the sky. That is of course, providing the weather is good and the skies are clear. Since I live 40 minutes outside Toronto, a clear sky is not a given.The cosmic performance gets under way around 8:40 p.m. EST with the total eclipse by 10:00 And if you are late for the show there won't be another one visible from Canada for nearly three years - Dec. 20, 2010. Get your binoculars or telescope and get out there- grab your thermal undies too; it is damn cold out there.
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There have been a few "once in a life time" or "won't happen again until you are old and gray" celestial events since I've moved to Toronto and for the most part they have been unobservable because of light pollution and regular pollution in the atmosphere. It's been really depressing because my wife won me a telescope from an airmiles contest that has been seldom used to look at the 5 stars or so that can be seen on a nightly basis (in the absence of cloud cover of course)
One funny thing I found was attending a local astronomy club in the durham region just outside toronto. The speakers at these meetings knew as much about astronomy as the dudes at NASA but when it came to actually LOOKING at the night skies they were always advising people to plan trips hours away from the city.
Backyard astronomy...yeah right...as long as it's not in southern Ontario.
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