This weekend there will be a total eclipse of the moon visible from North America. If you live East of the Mississippi in the United States and Eastern Canada, the entire lunar eclipse will be visible (weather permitting).
It will begin at 0128 UTC reaching maximum around 0338 UTC and ending at 0650 UTC. Maximum appears to last from 0338 UTC unit 0448 UTC (just from reading the information from the link below).
I also included an image I took through my 10” Newtonian telescope sometime around the turn of the century. I believe it was a total eclipse but since I don’t have the exact date, I cannot be sure.
Now for the “Happen-Chance” part of the event.
Is it not interesting that the moon rotates around the earth and around its own axis so that one side is always presented to our planet? Happen-Chance?
Is it not interesting that the moon is the right size and the right distance from the earth so that, when it eclipses the sun, it just covers the solar sphere as viewed from earth? Happen-Chance? And while the shadow cast by the earth is several times bigger than the moon, is it happen chance that the eclipse only occurs infrequently?
Recently, some of you no doubt saw the images of the moons of Mars crossing the solar sphere. Just blotting out some of the sun.
I have also seen, through my telescope, the shadows cast by Jupiters moon as it cross the surface of the planet. But the event, is nothing like our eclipses.
Now for one more Happen-Chance, sort of related. It has to do with Energy, Mass, and the Speed of Light.
Albert Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 and in doing so demonstrated that mass and energy are actually the same thing, with one a tightly compressed manifestation of the other. This mass-energy equivalence has had a major impact on all our lives, although how and why isn't always obvious.
E=MC^2
This, for me, was easily manifested during my work as a licensed Reactor Operator, and Navy Nuclear Training.
What it says is that if you have a certain mass and you can covert that mass to energy the resulting energy released is equal to the mass being covered times the speed of light squared.
A very, very, very simple equation to explain how nuclear fission and fusion work (among other things). One constant, the speed of light. Happen Chance?????
The fact that mass and energy are related based on the speed of light in a vacuum is, I believe more than happen-chance.
https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2022-may-16 https://www.emc2-explained.info
