I didn't get to see the eclipse last night. I was fully prepared to stay up until 3:45 AM to witness totality, but the weather decided not to cooperate. Rain wasn't having any of it. If this had been a solar eclipse, I would have been sorely disappointed. Solar eclipses are very rare, and only occur in very small bands. I believe the next solar eclipse in the United States is in 2017, and I have every intention of traveling to wherever totality will be occurring. A solar eclipse is something special, and is worth all the attention when they occur in populated areas.
Comparatively, lunar eclipses just aren't that special. I've already seen at least two in my life, and there's going to be three more lunar eclipses in the next two years. Sure, they're cool, but they're not really that impressive, or that rare. I don't really care for the term "blood moon" because it implies some sort of ominous presence to a relatively common event. The title of the article even has to assure the reader that this event isn't a sign of the apocalypse, which I might let slide on a general news site like CNN, but this is Space.com, a highly respected and important science news website. I guess there hasn't been a lunar eclipse in the United States in the social media era, which is why there's been such a big deal about it. I understand that the only way the general public is going to care about important scientific events like this is get them trending on social media, but I don't have to like it. People should care about science because it's important, not because it's what people are talking about right now on Twitter. That's the whole motivation behind the Cosmos reboot, science has taken a back seat in our society, and we need to bring it back to the forefront.
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