The Dragon Ate the Moon

 

Blood Moon
Blood Moon

The first time ever I saw the aurora we were with our friends Dave and Carol Lam at Suzi’s dad’s cabin on the St. Croix River in Minnesota. We were far from the city lights. We were watching a lunar eclipse. We had just come back from a summer session at Soochow University in Taiwan and were thinking of things Chinese. Carol looked up and said “The dragon is eating the moon.” As the light from the full moon dimmed the aurora shimmered, starting faint white, looking almost like a cloud, and brightening to a shimmering green. I said “I wonder what our ancestors must have thought of events like this?” I’m sure it meant something momentous to ancient mystics.

Last night there was no Aurora but there was a total eclipse, or blood moon, this morning. This event coinciding with Passover has one modern Jewish mystic making a dire prediction about Israel and the Iran nuclear deal. Sometimes mystics can be politically convenient. More apocalyptically two Christian ministers say this blood moon, because it is the third of four within a year, predicts the second coming.

Suzi decided we should set the alarm for 3:45 this morning to see the eclipse in its totality, not because it is predictive or apocalyptic but because it’s pretty. A thin cloud partially shrouded the moon but just at the point of totality, the cloud moved on and the earth’s shadow also moved as these time six lapse photos from this morning show.

And here is another sequence of pics as the moon moves across the sky interacting with the earth’s shadow.

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