Chairman Brando’s Fancy Finds: Dec 20, ’10

Nothing too fancy today — unless you find celestial events fancy. AND YOU SHOULD. I’m not convinced there’s much out there fancier than an eternal gravitational dance of massive bodies. There’s a mom joke in there somewhere but I’ll take the high road. This time…

December 20, 2010; 4:01 PM • by Chairman Brando

Nothing too fancy today — unless you find celestial events fancy. AND YOU SHOULD. I’m not convinced there’s much out there fancier than an eternal* gravitational dance of massive bodies. There’s a mom joke in there somewhere but I’ll take the high road. This time…

*Eternal meaning up to the heat death of the universe.

Lunar eclipse incoming (and soon)

I thought I’d already missed it already so I wasn’t going to mention it, but apparently the eclipse is tonight!

If you’re a nerd and don’t mind being out in the cold, you may want to wake up tonight and take a peek. A long peek. Unlike solar eclipses, lunar ones are decidedly slow. Here’s a quick timeline of the events.

1:32am	Earth’s shadow begins encroachment
2:41am	The moon is now fully eclipsed
3:53am	Earth’s shadow begins to GTFO
5:00am	The curtain falls until next time (i.e. it’s over)

So, if you only want to see the full effect, don’t rouse yourself out of bed until 2:41am. Too cold or too long or too “I have to sleep, god dammit” for you? Here’s a time-lapse example that brings the whole shenanigans down to ~30 seconds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVkkCVh5t0E

Of course, tonight’s eclipse may or may not look like that. Atmospheric conditions determine whether or not the moon is blood red or not visible at all! You can read more about that here. And here if you’re really into that whole science thing (NEEERRRDS!).

If you miss this one, it’ll only be three years until the next! Well, you could fly to Europe since their next is only six months away.

Updated!

So, the eclipse was wasted on most of the States given the stupid amount of cloud cover last night. Some guy in Florida, however, got a perfect view of the event and compiled it into a two-minute video for you to be jealous of.