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Total Lunar Eclipse This Weekend

SeaDour writes "This Saturday night, March 3rd, a total lunar eclipse will be visible from nearly all inhabited parts of the world. A great shadow will stretch across the surface of the moon, eventually casting it in an eerie red glow as sunlight filters through our atmosphere onto the lunar surface. Viewers in Europe and Africa will have the best vantage point, able to watch the entire eclipse in action, while observers in most of the western hemisphere can see it eclipsed as it rises just after sunset."

11 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. When where.. by JackMeyhoff · · Score: 5, Informative
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    http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
    1. Re:When where.. by Broken+scope · · Score: 4, Funny

      No that what we call "OH FUCK"

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      You mad
  2. Re:Time information by ACS+Solver · · Score: 5, Informative

    Begins at 2018 GMT, with the full eclipse being 2244 - 2358 GMT.

  3. Omen by sporkme · · Score: 5, Informative

    The eclipse starts at 3:18 p.m. EST Saturday, with the total eclipse occurring at 5:44 p.m. EST. Look east at sunset. I'll be out there for sure.

    The next total lunar eclipse occurs on August 28.

  4. Re:Time information by wkk2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It will start 10 minutes after the clouds arrive. Sorry, but that is what usually happens.

  5. Re:Panic?! by orasio · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes, we in the third world, as the uneducated subhumans that we are, will look at the big tit in the ceiling, as we like to call it, turn red and dissapear, and believe that the world has come to an end, running around with our arms up in the sky.

  6. Next Slashdot Post... by TheScreenIsnt · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Total Lunar Eclipse This Weekend a Hoax."

  7. Eric Idle by pipingguy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
    And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
    That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
    A sun that is the source of all our power.
    The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
    Are moving at a million miles a day
    In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
    Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.

    Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
    It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
    It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
    But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
    We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
    We go 'round every two hundred million years,
    And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
    In this amazing and expanding universe.

    The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
    In all of the directions it can whizz
    As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
    Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
    So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
    How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
    And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
    'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

  8. Re:Time information by dosquatch · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh, and will there be any plot twists involved?

    The following events take place between the hours of 8:00pm and 9:00pm EST:

    • NBC - David Copperfield special: "Making the Moon Disappear!"
    • CBS - David Blaine special: "No Sooner than Lunar, The Vanishing"
    • ABC - Criss Angel special: "Taking My Ball and Going Home: The Moon is Mine"
    • FOX - John Edward special: "Channelling Houdini: Souls of the Lost Moon"
    • DSC - Mythbusters special: "Superstition Run Amok: The moon is Still There, Stupid"
    --
    "Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
  9. Re:Panic?! by maggard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How will 3rd world inhabitants react to this lunar eclipse?

    Presumably with complete calm and mild interest, just like their condescending 1st world neighbors.

    It's not like lunar eclipses aren't particularly rare, about two happen a year. A full eclipse is less frequent but still happens often enough to have been already experienced by most adults.

    Indeed folks in poorer areas are usually less impressed by celestial phenomena because they are well familiar with such. Lighting costs money and so isn't as wasted as it is in many 1st world places, leaving the skies that much darker and their contents that much more visible.

    Want to see someone freak out over the contents of a night sky? Take a young person from any large first world city far out into the countryside on a clear evening, let their eyes dark adjust, and then show them the night sky. That prompts "some pretty interesting responses".

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    I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
  10. Re:Time information by Yvanhoe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Usually astronomical events happened 24 hours before they are posted in /.

    Seriously, while this one made it in time, wouldn't it be possible to put a "astronomy event" tag on submissions in firehose so that those submissions can be treated in priority and make it on time on the frontpage ?

    --
    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.