By Larry Berz
Fondly and movingly, I can only hope and believe our County community clutch spent its Sunday night pondering not only the total eclipse of the Moon but, more personally, the total eclipse of the heart which such events evoke. I happily and rather dizzyingly found myself in the company of some 30-50 local gazetteers, who spent anywhere from 1-4 hours observing and magnifying the evening Mystery lesson. My personal thanks to all participants as eyes of all ages appeared and enlarged around the LCS/MSSM school bend eager to watch the show. Whether you anchored in Limestone Community School/Maine School of Science and Mathematics parking lot with our six telescopes or chose a more secluded, intimate zone, I can with confidence communicate my firm conviction that the Sept. 27 super-Moon lunar eclipse met everyone’s immediate expectations.
“Moon river … wider than a mile … I’m crossing you in style … someday.” The scientific detail of what we viewed seemed pretty adequately broadcast by our social media. Most knew that the Sunday’s Moon would appear some 13% larger based upon its close proximity to our Earth (i.e., the “Super-moon”). Most understood the fundamental concept that our Earth casts a conical, yet tapering shadow into space in which our hapless (or happy?) satellite could cool off in the reddish glow of terrestrial twilights bent through Earth’s amiable atmosphere. Many knew of the “tetrad” or 4 consecutive total lunar eclipses beginning in April, 2014 and concluding with this 2015 event. Perhaps many local lives probably recalled the last clear, total lunar light show, on February 20th, 2008 in frozen parking lots and slippery sidewalks. Or even earlier eclipses, solar and lunar. And looking forwards, some of us perhaps already seem alert to the great American total solar eclipses scheduled August 21st, 2017 and April 8th, 2024 (this latter event actually amazingly shadowing Aroostook County)
“Oh, dream-maker, you heartbreaker, wherever you’re going, I’m going your way.” I found ongoing truths Sunday night. Or perhaps, they found me. First, and foremost, the lunar eclipse need remind us all that forces far mightier than our own human efforts really control the games people play…night or day. The radical facial changes in the “Man in the Moon” refresh and humble ourselves to recognize that we live in a wondrous and beautiful solar system of worlds each obedient not to the whims of human affairs but the inexorable command of physical laws which dominate and format their motions through space. Second, space is BIG, really BIG. For example, the shadow darkening our Sunday satellite, stretches like an invisible black ice cream cone some one million miles into the void. Since the Moon orbits the Earth about one quarter of that distance, it enjoys the distinct spectacle of occasionally drifting totally through the “extra” darkness of Earth’s shadow. As the eclipse progressed, and the sky further darkened, scores of stars emerged including the unmistakable presence of the Milky Way arching overhead. These rational astronomical realities should offer ample opportunity for personal reflection, humility, and appreciation. Third, as the eclipse transformed the Moon as well as the ever darkening sky, all viewers sensed they, too, entered into a new realm a new form of both self-understanding and community awareness. Shared wonder elicits enriched disclosures. Wonder serves as an antidote to the bland land of “normalcy” in our lives and the urgent importance of our place in space, but more importantly, our place on Earth, and in our towns, and in our own personal lives and minds. Fourth, contrasted with the Moon, we inhabit a small, but living planet, engorged and enriched with life and breathable air. We live on a planet where we can cherish our children’s future. Now stands out as the time to recognize our mortality and obedience to that Ethic which answers outside us, to number our days well. That brown-red ball suspended on nothing last night, stark—cold—lifeless cautions us to guard and steward our world well. In the foreseeable future, no other likely destinations in this solar system call out to us. No rescuing spaceships look likely to save us from our own folly. And finally, the eclipsed moon, if we permit, also eclipses our heart to reveal in the strange, perplexing human light a new way of perceiving perhaps our own dreams once again restored to a plausible purpose. Could perhaps a sky event, which some claimed as a foreboding omen, in truth, serve just the opposite goal….to just perhaps offer new opportunities for serving both the far side of space and the inside of our own minds approaching the process to solve the solution known as peace.
In the final analysis and appeal, let the 2015 total lunar eclipse (the last visible for County country eyes until May, 2020) speak out boldly against the climate of “terror” violating our lives especially since September, 2001. Let this eclipse event herald a new September of wonder, refreshing, and possibilities, with communities and individuals questing towards new adventure, freedom, and life for all people. Let boldness, compassion, and courage mitigate and dictate our days….and nights. “There’s such a lot of world to see. We’re after the same rainbow’s end—waiting round the bend, my huckleberry friend, Moon River and me.”
Larry Berz of Caribou is director of Easton’s Francis Malcolm Planetarium and astronomy instructor at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.
