What does a lunar eclipse look like, from the Moon?

Last night Grama and I were watching the eclipse through her window, and I found myself wondering, what does it look like from up there?  Since no one has ever stood on the moon during a lunar eclipse (which I suppose would be called a "transit" if you were actually standing on the moon watching the Earth pass in front of the sun), I have free rein in speculating what it would look like, and I'm pretty sure it would be an experience to wound the most callous breast.

First of all, a lunar eclipse is what you get when the moon passes through the Earth's shadow, as depicted in this image stolen from space.com:   

If we were standing on the moon looking up at the Earth, there are a few things that we'd immediately be amazed by.  For example, the Earth does not rise and set in the lunar sky.  The moon is tidally locked to the Earth, so that the same side of the moon always faces us.  The Earth sits in one spot in the moon's sky, a spinning globe, while the sun rises and moves across the sky--sometimes passing directly behind the Earth--once per month.  The Earth is also MUCH bigger in the moon's sky than the moon is in the Earth's sky, and this is not an optical illusion.  The Earth is bigger by almost a factor of 4.  And thanks to all the clouds, the Earth is much more reflective than the dark lunar surface--which is about as reflective as blacktop.  So, imagine looking up, seeing a full Earth that is the size of four full moons, and up to thirty times as bright.  Neat, huh?

Similarly, if we were standing on the moon and watching a "transit" of the Earth in front of the sun, the Earth would appear about four times the size of the sun.  However, the Earth would not be big and bright and full--it would be a dark night-side Earth, with street lights faintly outlining the continents as they slowly rotate from west to east.  The Earth sits as a huge dark sphere, next to a bright yellow sun, in a black starry sky.  As the sun passes behind the disk of the Earth, our moonscape darkens, is bathed in red light, and instantly cools by hundreds of degrees.  A thin dark red circle of light outlines the Earth--this is sunlight refracting through the thin layer of atmosphere.  Random flashes of light sparkle on all sides of the Earth--sunlight reflecting off of the solar panels of some 3000 spy, weather, and communications satellites.  Behind the Earth, the Solar corona waves in all colors and directions, like the wings of an angel, keeping us while we sleep.      

Keep me as the apple of the eye,

hide me under the shadow of thy wings.

Be merciful to me, 

for my soul trusteth in thee;

yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge,

until these calamities be overpast.

Spacegirl discovers the local wildlife.

Having successfully retrieved Jessi from the bus stop while driving at a reasonable speed, our adventures officially began.  We woke up early Saturday morning, and after a breakfast of whole grain pancakes with organic raspberries we donned our down and headed up to Pickerel Lake for the most important event of the season.  

For miles on the way up, we were paced by snowmobiles (a.k.a. "sleds") following a trail

 parallel to the road--in fact this was a helpful clue that we were going in the right direction given the uncertainty of my backseat drivers.  Eventually the sleds pealed away into the woods, cutting across the lake to the big event.  I don't really know how to describe the scene when we arrived.  

Imagine standing on a frozen lake under a beautiful cirrus sky, with windchills many tens of degrees below zero, and as far as the eye can see are parked hundreds of snowmobiles, pickup trucks stuck in drifts, ice fishing shacks, and hundreds of men wearing wild animals on their heads drinking Bud Light. 

 (Ladies, the man/woman ratio in these parts is much more favorable here than in DC.)  Having hacked a giant hole in the ice, there is really only one logical course of action: (1) drive your $35000 snowmobile across it and, assuming that went well, (2) take off all your clothes and jump in--especially if you have been training for this event all winter and have just the perfect red bikini for the occasion!  Oh yes, yes I did catch all this on film:  

Riding the waves  (video)

Rolling in the waves  (video)

Paco keeps Jessi warm, hopes not to become a hat:

One of our companions, Scott, also took a dip in the frigid waters, and Paco was happy to warm him back up, too. It's always nice to see a big manly man in a Harley shirt get kissed by a Papillon.  Dogs have a way of seeing through that tough exterior to the sweet heart inside.

We spent the next ten hours or so back outside, sledding every hill we could find in the city of Wausau before deciding that the hill in our own backyard was better, and furthermore it comes with hot chocolate.  

Jessi demonstrates the power of the Otter II gear sled to function in downhill conditions.

Angels leave their mark.

The next day we were up early again, undaunted by a mere blizzard warning in our attempt to get Jessi back to the bus station.  The first flakes were accumulating as we pulled out of the driveway, and what should have been an easy 1.5 hour drive quickly became a serious exercise in concentration.  We averaged 30 mph on the highway, and the bus was long gone by the time we arrived.  Thankfully, we tricked a friend of Jessi's into coming up to get her from Milwaukee--which wasn't getting any snow.  My drive back home to Antigo took another 4 hours--I thought about goat's feet the entire way.

On the night of a full moon...

One never knows what one will come across in the woods, and this is also true of the mall.  Who is this beautiful blue-eyed stranger skulking silently, his mosh pit suit blending in perfectly with his surroundings?   

Oh, the wild fox, the wild fox! 

he can't be tamed, 

he can't be tamed.

Dang it! Spacegirl learns how to drive.

Indeed.  On my way to pick up cousin Jessica from the bus station in Appleton, I once again settled into my comfortable default DC-Baltimore I-95 commuting speed of 74 miles an hour, and this time there was no grander lesson to learn than that, in these parts, folks obey the law.  Since then I've been using cruise control religiously.I have also completely renounced any tendency to take pictures of things like the rising full moon while driving, as this State Trooper can affirm.  Now I always make sure the passenger drives while I do that. 

 

Spacegirl hits the Airways.

A dog after my own heart, Maddie doesn't let a few quadrillion snowflakes stand in the way of a good time.

Yesterday morning, as I was late and racing to record an interview at the Wisconsin Public Radio studio--asking myself WHY I keep making appointments before noon despite the fact

 that I am obviously a night person--I was forced to pause and reflect on the meaning of it all when a nice police officer stopped me for speeding at about 20 mph over the limit.  At first, seeing the lights behind me added fuel to my flaming thoughts about having to get up early and not get paid for it.  But sitting in the car at 0 mph watching the clock tick, I couldn't help reaching for the camera and pretty soon I was noticing how beautiful the area around me was.  In that time, I had a brief moment of understanding that going to this interview was an opportunity custom-made for my abilities, and a perfect fit to my sense of doing good in the world.  Is there more than that to ask for in life?  Did I really want to undermine that gift by 

taking myself so seriously?  Abandoning fear, grateful for the chance to chill the heck out, I was all the more relieved when the cop handed me a warning.  "You can throw that away if you want", he said.

The interview itself went reasonably well, and I may have even said some things that make sense.  This was also the first on-air plug for the Global Science Institute.  However, one question came up that I still do not have a positive answer for:  

"Will the discovery of life on other planets help us understand the origin of life on Earth?"  As a promoter of research in Astrobiology, I want there to be a simple, "yes it will"-ty

pe answer to this question.  However, as a scientist, I honestly can't imagine how discovering something that may or may not have anything in common with us will shed light on what occurred 3.8 billion years ago on Earth to give rise to the first organisms here.  I thought about this all the way home.  My current belief is that this question simply cannot be answered.  We have such a primitive, shadowy understanding of what life is, let alone where it comes from, that _any_ discovery of extraterrestrial life may begin to crack open human beliefs about what is possible.  Human descriptions of life and its origin, whether recited from the church pulpit or from the ivory towers of academia, are like dust in the face of eternity.  Regardless of the tons of CO2 that have been exhaled by Earthly philosophers debating this topic, I believe we are embedded in a network of life whose grandeur, when seen, will finally precipitate that long-promised moment, of "silence for the space of half an hour."  

Anyway, at some point this interview will show up on CBC's "Quirks and Quarks" radio program.  Meanwhile, the WPR station manager was so intrigued with that interview that I'll be doing a live show on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Route 51" next week Thursday, 5pm CST.  Tune in, all!  And call in with all your hardest questions, because you know I won't talk about this stuff at parties.

The Pentagon's latest display.

In the midst of election obsession, an important unfolding of events is getting away without much public scrutiny.  

The old guard neocon advisers do not miss one beat.  When I heard that a failed US spy satellite, launched just over a year ago, was due for an uncontrolled re-entry, my first thought was, "Another billion taxpayer dollars down the drain."  I did _not_ think, "Oh no, I hope it doesn't hit anyone!"  Space junk, including defunct satellites, de-orbits regularly and burns up in the atmosphere.   In this case, the fact that so much fuel is still on board only makes it more likely that the thing will blow itself up into tiny little pieces before it lands in some random remote area of the planet.  You are more likely to win the Powerball Jackpot hundreds of times before a chunk of satellite lands in your yard.  However, the fact that this non-story was being given significant air-time on CNN gave me pause.  Eventually the little wheels in my head had turned enough that I wondered how long it would take someone to notice that this was the perfect opportunity to show China that "We Can Do That, Too!", by shooting it down.  Like naughty children, predictable to the end, a Pentagon request to do exactly that was approved by the White House today.  And that naughty predictability includes pretending to hide our real motives, by clothing this extraordinary action in weak and unscientific excuses about the vanishingly miniscule danger to populated areas.  

My belief now is that this entire episode has likely been in the works since shortly after China shot down one of *their* defunct satellites.  Why do I think this?  Well, it's been known for a year that this US satellite was coming down, and we could have heard months ago if it was a real threat to humanity.  Furthermore, given the frequency with which space missions go awry, it is a little far-fetched to think that the Pentagon is only now suddenly concerned about the toxic rocket fuel on board.  It is also clear from the information released to the press that this little project has been on the table for a while, with analyses of how much debris would be produced, how this would affect ISS and the shuttle, how many chances they'll get to hit the target, etc.  The sudden promotion of this story right before re-entry, the creation of an utterly farcical picture of a "multi-ton" satellite filled with "deathly toxic chemicals" crashing to the ground (complete with references to the Bruce Willis film "Armageddon"), and the huge production about shooting it down--all point to a long-rehearsed screenplay.  What a display of American power:  China tries so hard to look scary, and meanwhile we can just shoot down spy satellites on the spur of the moment if we feel like it (yawn).  Aside from the irritation this causes other countries who see the pony show for what it is, I can't help thinking that other extraordinary displays of military power haven't been working out that well for us lately.  What an embarrassment it would be if we missed.

[UPDATE:  We did not miss.  The spycam was successfully blown to smithereens, and now we hope the international fallout will have minimal impact, as well.]

New Worlds Observer is funded!

Today the good news arrived from NASA Headquarters that our proposal for the New Worlds Observer has been funded for a concept study.  The Principle Investigator of this project is Web Cash at CU-Boulder.  As a member of the science team, I'll be working with the engineers to map out what it'll take, in terms of technical specifications, for a dedicated "starshade" space telescope to discover planets like the Earth orbiting nearby stars.  A starshade design (also called an external coronagraph for optics buffs) basically involves flying a big piece of flower-shaped canvas in front of the telescope to block out the light of a bright star, so that we can see an tiny planets orbiting around it.  My job will involve looking at the layout of the stars in the Solar Neighborhood and asking (1) which stars are the most interesting from a "life" perspective and (2) which stars are the easiest to search for Earths (often these are two totally different samples) and how precise these measurements will have to be to find these potential homes away from home.  Our science team will also have a major focus on what _else_ we can learn from a mission like this.  In addition to finding habitable planets, New Worlds may make great inroads into learning how planetary systems like our own evolve from a cloud of dust and gas, to a symphony of giant planets, terrestrial planets, moons, asteroids, and comets.

The answer to Monday's "name that Woodpecker" challenge?  It turns out our innocent-looking suet-eating "bird" is actually a small alien spybot, designed to the exact specifications of a Hairy Woodpecker.  Even the other birds were fooled.  Congratulations to those who guessed right! 

Brrrr!!!!! Brrrr!!!! And again, brrrr!! rrrr, rrr, rr, r.

I hope everyone in DC has Ba-racked the vote by the time you read this!  :-)  I will be waiting on pins and needles for the results even though I already know what will happen.

Well, yesterday it was so cold (-15F, -50 windchill) that despite all the begging the dogs did not get me any further than the back deck.  To be honest, though, I was intimidated by the numbers and didn't try that hard.  TODAY, however, it got all the way up to 7F, so we went showshoeing all throughout the backwoods, including on many neighbors' properties who I hope won't mind.  I was actually overheated in my trusty Eddie Bauer parka which I've had forever and ever.  But it was fun snowshoeing because there are so many different kinds of snow right now--sometimes you can stay right on top, sometimes it's just powder, sometimes it breaks into little pieces that clink over the surface.  We almost lost poor little Paco who got tired of pushing through snow over his head, but he was a trooper and followed in my tracks for a long time.  I thought of making a video pretending I was at the South Pole being tracked by the little-known Antarctic wolves.  Both dogs were totally covered in ice when we got home.

Freelance astrobiology, my newly self-invented job, is so far so good.  I'm working with teams at ASU, CU-Boulder, and MIT on missions to find Earth-like planets and life throughout the galaxy.  This fancy arrangement is not quite paying the bills yet, but one step at a time, yes?  (Barack, if you slash NASA's budget, I may have to come camp out with the anti-Bomb folks on your front yard next year.)  On Wednesday I'm doing a Canadian public radio interview on what it will take to find aliens!  Meanwhile, I'm asking myself:  Should I get paid for interviews like that?  I've never charged before, but now I'm freelance, people!!!  

In addition to getting a new driver's license, tags, registration, insurance, electric bill, phone line, and voter registration, my biggest high priority task for the next few weeks is getting the Global Science Institute started here in Antigo.  At the moment, this "institute" exists entirely in the realm of Mind (which of course is where all good and true things reside), but I've begun wading through the non-trivial task of non-profit incorporation.  The mission of GSI?  (1) To enable me to have an affiliation stamped on my invoices, (2) to enable people of northern Wisconsin to take part in research projects via government- or privately-funded grants, and (3) to host public lectures on all areas of science, sponsor summer student research, and offer scholarships for students exploring multidisciplinary science and green technology at Wisconsin state colleges.  Collaborators wanted!

For all the folks who still live in "the city" and haven't yet discovered life in the woods, I would like to share two typical social interactions I recently had.   Yesterday at the grocery checkout, the attendant asked me if I had a discount card.  I replied that I thought I had one somewhere but hadn't seen it in a while.  She replied that she would just use hers.  Then after scanning all my items and taking my credit card, she looked at the receipt and exclaimed, "Oh!!  I forgot to scan my card!  Hold on, I'll call my supervisor, because you coulda saved $1.29."  At that point her supervisor came right over gave me $1.29 in cash, both of them apologizing several times for the mistake.  The guy behind me in line chuckled and said, "Next time you can use mine."  From there (part two), I went to the gym and ran into a guy I used to know in high school.  We hadn't really known each other in school, but he recognized me from a "stars" talk I gave once, and I explained I was moving back to town.  The next day he showed up with a friend and they carried all my things up the stairs into the new apartment.  He also brought me a bird book, because I had mentioned seeing an unusually large woodpecker in the birdfeeder.  I'm not saying that the folks in trafficjammedhurryupIhavetosavetheworld locales aren't also patient and friendly, but take from that experience what you will.  ...Anyone care to ID the woodpecker in the video below?

Well, tomorrow morning I will have one more dog to add to the pack, as Jamie is dropping off her Gordon Setter while she's out of town.  I will be taking care of her two cats and birds on top of that.  Animals, animals, pile them on!  It's Maggie's Ark.  :-)