http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...6/MN212435.DTL
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EYES WIDEN AS MOON VANISHES
Despite haze, colorful eclipse delights Bay Area's sky-watchers
Chuck Squatriglia, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, May 16, 2003
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Four-year-old Noah Fox didn't know an eclipse from an eclair, but no matter. He knew the moon was going to disappear, and that would be pretty neat.
Even neater, it was going to change color.
"The moon is gonna turn red!" he exclaimed as darkness fell on San Francisco's Marina Green, where Noah's parents and two dozen other people gathered under a hazy sky to watch Earth's full eclipse of the moon Thursday night.
Others gathered on hillsides and rooftops around the Bay Area as even more stopped whatever they were doing to witness a phenomenon that has delighted people since the dawn of man.
"It's an ancient thing, coming out to watch the moon disappear," said James McHugh, a lifelong astronomy buff from San Francisco. "We like to recapture that primitive magic of watching a celestial body disappear."
The magic began at 7:03 p.m. but wasn't visible for almost two hours. That didn't keep people from lining up along the Marina Green as the sun slipped behind the Marin Headlands, turning the western sky pink.
Avid astronomy buffs in the crowd admired each other's telescopes and talked about the heavens as everyone huddling against the evening chill kept asking, "When's it going to happen?"
It happened at 8:45 p.m.
"There it is!" someone shouted.
Although the moon "disappears" during a lunar eclipse, it doesn't go completely black. Some indirect sunlight passes through Earth's atmosphere, painting the moon red to orange.
Provided the sky is clear, that is. It wasn't on Thursday night, so the moon was hard to see at first, just a sliver of light against the night sky.
"You can see it, but it's not worth taking a picture of," someone complained.
Things got better as the moon rose, and by 9:05 p.m. the moon was a ruddy orange crescent. Across town at Pacific Bell Park, where the Giants were beating the New York Mets, the eclipsed moon appeared through the fog rolling in off the bay at 9:15 p.m., drawing a loud cheer.
Things were quieter at the Marina, where people took turns peering through telescopes and marveling at the cosmos. In the grand scheme of the universe, a lunar eclipse is pretty small potatoes and is not uncommon. But it has the ability to instill a sense of awe in people of all ages.
Chronicle Science Editor David Perlman contributed to this report. / E-mail Chuck Squatriglia at
csquatriglia@sfchronicle.com.
did you see the lunar eclipse last night?
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