I'll catch the next one in 2010

Last night's plan see the lunar eclipse was a bust. The skies seemed to be clearing up when I got off of work but the clouds rolled in just before the event started. The best that I could hope for were brief views in between breaks in the clouds as you can see from this snap shot. It wasn't as if I could travel to escape the cloud cover.

In my junior year of college, there was supposed to be a superb viewing of some meteor shower. I want to say it was the Leonids but I can't be sure. Anyways, the skies were overcast in East Lansing but they weren't in western Illinois. Trying to be spontaneous, I convinced my friend Kacey, who is also interested in astronomy, to drive us out to Illinois just so we could see them. It was supposed to be an exciting road trip.

So we're traveling down I-94 and going through our home county of Berrien which is in the most southwestern part of the state. Just as we crossed the St. Joseph River. BANG! A f'ing deer hits us. After screaming our respective lines of obscenities, We limp to a service station to survey the damage. My stomach sunk to my feet when there was a foot of car missing. It was exchanged for a few tufts of deer fur.

Luckily this happened up the road from our parents. Her car was pretty much done for and we returned to Lansing without a car, without any money, and without seeing the meteor shower.

I try to do my stargazing with a little more planning nowadays. Plus, it's not as if I haven't seen a lunar eclipse before. They happen a lot more frequently than solar eclipses (which I haven't seen a total one ever). So I can at least show you a picture that I got from one that occurred in 2003.