Mr Bagel: Once in a Red Moon

Wednesday 29 August 2007

Once in a Red Moon

Last night was one of the rare occasions when you find yourself outside in the fresh air, thinking of mother earth, and not how you're going to pay next months bills.

Living remote, we get more than the usual handful of speckled stars across the sky.

In fact we get a phenomena which most people may not remember since childhood. We're actually able to see the milky way. A blaze of thousands of stars spread across the sky, in a night sky that would put most observatories to shame.

We don't have 'light pollution' problems, out here the neighbours are sparse to say the least and apart from the rare headlights seen in the vast distance there are no other lights.

Our 3 girls were up waiting impatiently to see this rare total lunar eclipse, our brand spanking new digital camera at the ready.

Slowly the moon disappeared from the unusual angle of losing its bottom first, later the moon glowed a crimson red that was so bright, if it had been an earlier less sophisticated time could have possibly heralded the end of times.

In amongst a blaze of stars spreading across the vastness of the night sky this cherry red prize seemed to dazzle all the adults below.

The girls seemed to not appreciate the colour shift of the moon, it paled poorly in comparison to the usual special effects in tele - movies. They pondered; wondering what all the hullabaloo was.

It was then I remembered the simpler times in my life as a young child, living on the outer edge of the sixties urban sprawl, I looked up and could see the milky way. Now that view from that distant memory would be nothing but industrialised smog.

With a swathe of red moon snaps on the digital camera I rushed inside to find not one had registered anything more than the appearance of a faulty red pixel, and I reminisced how far we had come, but also how far we have gone.

It may have taken two weeks to have got my film back with my old 'film' camera but I would have had some beautiful - photos, instead I had a poor digital rendition of what could have been.