Thursday, 9 October 2014

The moon as a rubber object

On 8 October Australia scored a total lunar eclipse, with a red moon visible (if you stayed up long enough) for an hour.

Australians have a habit of using opposites as colloquialisms with a good example - at least in the past - of calling people with red hair 'Bluey'.  So perhaps the use of  'a blue moon' as a metaphor for a rare event comes from these eclipses?

The reference to a red object comes from really mixing metaphors, combining David Niven's autobiography "The Moon's a Balloon" and the Simon and Garfunkel song "Red Rubber Ball" which refers to a different celestial object, but what the heck.

The first three images are from the 7th of October, showing a normal moon.

 No sign of ET, just some branches.
 To business.  This was the situation at 20:51 AEST.
 2126 - this was 1 minute after totality (assuming the time was correctly set on my camera).
 2129: that is pretty red, but if my blood was that colour I'd be looking at some iron supplements!

No comments: