Lunar Eclipse

On Wednesday morning, I woke up my children at 4:45 a.m.  Lucy grabbed her favorite blankie and Emma grabbed her phone for pictures.  We padded barefoot out the front door, across the street, to a neighbor's driveway and looked west over our house as the moon fell into the earth's shadow.

It was a morning I will never forget.  We three sat in our neighborhood and talked and talked and talked.  I tried with words to explain to Lucy what was happening to the moon.  After I finished explaining, Emma said, "Do you see that leaf out there in front of us?"  There was a leaf about 3 feet out in front of us on the driveway.  It was lit up by the garage light behind us.  Emma used her hand to make a round shadow and began covering the leaf with the shadow.  She told Lucy that her hand was the earth, and the leaf was the moon.  As we watched it fall into the shadow she stopped as it became fully eclipsed by her hand.  Then she moved it again so that the leaf would fall back into the light from the garage (sun) from the opposite side.  Lucy immediately said "Now I've got it."  What a great lesson for Lucy.

I remarked that I had always wanted to go to the moon and really wish I had had the opportunity.

Emma said "I will take pictures for you when I get there."

Ingress Mosaic from Texas
Image every five minutes with a regular DSLR and processed using Gimp (just as good as Photoshop and free!)

Photograph: Πανδώρα Άγαδακις