Once In A Lifetime

So last night something that happens once in 400 years happened: a lunar eclipse that fell on the winter solstice. And being the huge lover of astronomy that I am, I stayed up until 2 am to watch it. And woooow it was so so so cool. I started to write a blog while I waited for it to eclipse, so here is the slightly delirious rant I went on.

I'm sitting here watching the Lunar Eclipse - well, sorta. I check on it every once in a while while I'm doing stuff online, and I have NASA's ustream open - and I have time to kill before it goes red. That makes me think of Doctor Who - you know, the Ood's eyes going red? - or maybe it's the fact that I'm listening to the Series 1 and 2 soundtrack. *shrug* Anyway, I'm thinking about Doctor Who. It also probably doesn't help that I watched Mansfield Park with Billie Piper in it. (It was so WEIRD seeing her as Fanny Price. I gotta say I think I like the brown-haired Fanny better...Frances O'Connor? BUT ANYWAY.) Doctor Who is just on my mind. (Here's hoping I get Series 5 for Christmas!)

I'm taking photographs of the moon as it goes, though they're not turning out as well as I'd hoped. I probably won't post this till after it's done so that I can add the photos. Aaaaand I can no longer see the moon from my window. Damn.

Well, I've just run outside to do some more photographing. I've discover it is actually quite chilly out there with just a sweater on. And also that it is incredibly difficult to take a steady picture of the moon when your camera is zoomed in all the way. So my pictures will have a bit of double-moon going on, I think. Sigh.

See? Blurry, double moon. But still quite nifty.

I'm starting to get sleepy. This isn't good. It's not even 12:30 yet. The eclipse won't be over for an hour! Sigh. I think I might go downstairs and read. Not that that will wake me up any.

See? Slightly delirious. But I didn't end up reading, I started thinking. I thought about how absolutely fantastic life was to see things like the eclipse happen. I mean, really, I got to see something that no one will see again in our lifetime. I got to witness this miracle of nature - does space count as nature? - and it just happened. There is no real reason why. It's not like the moon had to eclipse last night to survive some strange climate or something. It's just one of those things that happens. So. Cool.

And then I started thinking about how itty bitty we were on our planet. I didn't get all pessimistic, thinking about how nothing mattered in our lives, because I think that's just untrue. Everything we do as a person is incredibly important and shapes our world in some way. What I started to do was thinking about the Who's in Whoville, and started likening myself to them. Which was really fun, actually. I imagined everyone I knew as a Who. And now I want to see everyone I know drawn as a Who. XD