The dirty little secret of astronomy. Rare or even once in a lifetime events occur all the fracking time. But that’s because there are so many possible types of events. Its like pointing out an interesting series of chess moves or combinations of cards drawn from a deck.
The ones that the general public can see, understand, and actually be impressed by occur IMO about every 5 years give or take. And those often require you to be in the right place at the right time AND have the weather AND your life schedule cooperating as well.
My WAG is the average Joe public see’s only a handful “wow, that was neat as shit and I’ll never forget it” astronomy things in his or her lifetime. And that’s with them trying to see these things.
“Supermoon” actually isn’t that annoying of a term. Once I noticed the Moon on the horizon looked extra big and indeed it was a supermoon. It really is noticeable, contrary to what Astrobloggers would lead you to believe.
OTOH, “Blood Moon” is awful, awful, awful. Just say “total lunar eclipse”. (Note that the “bloodness” of a given eclipse is not all that predictable far in advance. Weather and dust in the atmosphere make the redness vary quite a bit.)
Two lakeside parks in Chicago are staying open until midnight just so geeks like me and my friends won’t get in trouble when we’re hanging out on the beach tonight. Same group of friends who drove an hour outside the city in August - from midnight til dawn - to watch the pinnacle of the Perseid meteor shower.
Hoping the cloud cover cooperates, supposed to thin out later but pretty overcast right now. If it dwindles to just the thin high cirrus cover like last night, we’ll be OK with that. Much thicker and there won’t be much, if anything, to see.
I’m in northern California. If I understand correctly, it should be from 7:00 to 8:00 pm for me, is that right?
There are so many trees here at my house, it’s hard to get a good look at the sky without being in rattlesnake territory, so I may have to plan to be elsewhere.
Alas, we’re supposed to have increasing clouds tonight. Plus I have to get up at 5 in the morning, so staying up to catch totality at 10:30 or so won’t work. And it’s not like I’ve never seen a blood moon before.
A number of years ago (20, more or less) there was a total eclipse that we watched with our daughter’s telescope. We lived in a fairly dark area, so it made for good viewing. I thought the deep red-brown color was especially impressive.
My mom’s on a cruise and they’ll be transiting at sea overnight - I hope they tell the passengers about the eclipse and dim some of the deck lights. That would be very cool!
We arranged a camping trip specifically for this event. I am sitting by the campfire at a site on Lake George. The skies are clear and should stay that way for the eclipse. There is also a pretty awesome music fest going on here, so we’re sitting here listening to the music. Last night, to our surprise, they set off a huge fireworks show. Nice.