Lunar eclipse makes huge impact in tiny time frame

It races clouds to please crowds, then the thrill was gone

CHAPEL HILL -- Done helping set up an array of telescopes for the gathering crowd, Richard McColman looked to the east and knew that there was going to be a race.

It was 6:09 p.m., and somewhere behind that blurred line of clouds in the fast-darkening sky, the moon had just risen, already in full eclipse. But would it make it above the clouds before starting to come out of the Earth's shadow?

"I just hope we don't have too many disappointed people," said McColman, a member of Chapel Hill's astronomy club and an employee of the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center.

It was to be the first total eclipse of the moon in two and a half years, but the crowd of about 75 at East Chapel Hill High School had a window of only 45 minutes to see it before the moon began to ease out of the earth's shadow. The characteristic color red or orange of many full eclipses would begin to fade.

Up at the top of the stands, to better see above a line of pine trees to the east, another member of the club had set up binoculars on a tripod, and about a dozen people had collected around him.

"It should be up, just to the side of the goal post there," Walter Fowler said.

The minutes stretched out. Small kids boomed up and down the aluminum stands. Seven teenagers on the playing field tossed a football and a lighted Frisbee. Adults huddled against the cool breeze.

Then, with about 15 minutes left, Mike Feezor, high in the stands with Fowler, saw a faint piece of dull orange.

"There it is," said the retired Duke professor, pointing. "It's in the trees to the side of the goal post."

Binoculars went up, other people pointed.

The sight once caused fear and awe. Surely a blackness gobbling the moon's glow until it's the color of old bloodstains must portend terrible things, people once thought.

Now, though, it's one of the most user-friendly astronomical events, given the size of the moon in the sky and the fact that looking at it doesn't require eye protection like a solar eclipse.

And there's just a simple joy in the notion of the three biggest balls in view lining up.

"Can you see it?" Todd Boyette of Hillsborough asked daughter Ashley, 9, as she climbed to the highest row of bleachers.

"I see it!" she said "Ohhhh!"

Boyette pronounced the sight lovely before Ashley and Colin, 6, began lobbying to go somewhere warm and get some dinner.

Nearby, Christine Hamilton, 13, and her brother Adam, 11, of Chapel Hill, both held up camera phones to take pictures.

"It's really, really cool how it looks red," she said.

McColman, meanwhile, had moved a telescope onto the playing field for a better angle.

As people lined up for a glimpse, he was cheerfully explaining that the moon had turned red because the light striking it no longer came directly from the sun but rather was deflected through our atmosphere, so it was kind of like seeing the light from our own sunrises and sunsets.

Then came the beginning of the end -- a bright, almost-white line appeared on the left side of the moon. The sun was shining on it again.

But the crowd had won the race.

"It just barely sneaked through," said McColman, smiling in the dark. "Just barely."