If you get caught between the moon and...

Took the dog out for a last run on Wednesday night and saw something I had never seen before. It genuinely surprised me. 

Let me preface this by reminding everyone that I grew up in the friendly confines of the five boroughs, and between the frequent rainy weather and the fog off the ocean and the light pollution and the pollution pollution it was often hard to see anything in the night sky. So astronomy never had much pull for me. The teacher would get excited about an upcoming eclipse, and the students would be like -- You think my parents are going to let me stand on the sidewalk at 3:46 a.m. to watch this? So only the dedicated far-out space nuts went in for serious astronomical stuff. 

But what I saw last Wednesday made me smile, and if you saw it too, maybe it did the same. 

At first I noticed the brightness -- full moon, fast-moving scrim of patchy clouds above. Very nice. Then I saw a little dot very close to the moon, less than a quarter inch from it by my vantage point. I knew that was odd, since starlight is not bright enough to be seen that close to the moon (right? Remember, knows nothing). Then I noticed that the dot was red, and realized it was Mars. 

That's right -- we were about to have a lunar eclipse, or more properly an occultation, of the planet Mars. While Izzy was fussing around looking for a place to go, I was looking at what seemed like a neck-and-neck footrace. With the clouds flying fast, it looked like the moon and Mars were racing hard against each other. But no, they were on a collision course. 

I read later that Mars was exceptionally bright, at its closest point to Earth in the year, and the so-called Cold Moon of December was definitely brilliant. I'd never seen this before, and the next one isn't until January 2025, and probably won't be this great a light show. 

Unfortunately, the cell phone camera speed isn't fast enough to get good pictures of celestial stuff. 

Here in the Northeast, the race went on until after my sack time. Apparently there was a pretty bad collision, because I hear that as of today there's no life on the moon or Mars. (har har) 

In the morning, the sky was clear and the two celestial bodies had gone their separate ways. Now there was about half an inch between them and growing. Well, without sounding paganistic, I'd like to hope that maybe with the moon blocking us from the god of war for a few hours, we could get a little extra peace on Earth this Christmastime. 

That's what passed for exciting around here on Wednesday, and I have to say, it's not bad. You can read about these things, but it's always more fun to see them for yourself. And if you stumble upon them by accident, it's pure serendipity.