Tuesday 21 December 2010

Solstice



The solstice will be on Tuesday 21 December at 23:38.

If the sky remains clear it may be possible to see an eclipse of the moon from Britain. Just in case it clouds over, I took the picture on the early hours of the 21st.

"The eclipse runs for three and a half hours, from 0633 GMT to 1001 GMT, although the stage of total eclipse -- when the Moon heads into the "umbra" cast by the Earth -- lasts from 0741 to 0853 GMT."

Normally sounds wash around here; water, planes, distant traffic, trains, the wind tells a tale it has carried for a while. Once I heard it singing in Russian.

Tonight there were no flights, no cars or lorries moving, no sounds from the rails and the wind is holding its breath. The moonlight was so bright everything was casting sharp moon shadows and the silver trees were full of fairytale forms.

It is about minus 12 degrees Celsius and even sound is frozen.

8 comments:

Richard said...

What a lovely post. Very evocative. I will be on my way home from work at the time of the eclipse and will look out for it, although I fear that we will have too much cloud here. I'll never forget the amazing copper colour of the moon when I first saw one of these.

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Incredibly bright here last night, and although there is cloud around now, the gold/brown glow is starting already!

'Sound is frozen'...Poetry.

Richard said...

Clear sky here and a good view, so I hope to see it. No copper glow yet, though. Perhaps these things happen later in Wales :)

Woman on a Raft said...

A bonus for you then, Richard, is that you are on your way home to a cosy bed. Anyone else is going to have to leave one to go looking for the moon.

Thank you, Scrobs. The light has been exceptionally bright; there is a long narrow alley I go through. The night before last I happened to walk it just as the moon aligned with it, so it was as bright as a neolithic tunnel-tomb.

Those neoliths; what are they like? Huge amounts of effort to build stone corridors just for light show on the off-chance that it is not chucking it down when an astral body sails past the door.

All Seeing Eye said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
JuliaM said...

Sadly, we were under cloud cover all night, so missed the eclipse.

But it has meant a sudden thaw, and since I've no wish to clear the snow off my car AGAIN, I'll be satified with that! :)

Bill Quango MP said...

Wonderful post. The wind is holding its breath.
Magical.

Ollie Cromwell said...

I love the eclectic nature of your blog and hve added it to my must reads.