This past year suffered from sky depression: Venus was a washout. Not one eclipse occurred over the United States. The best meteor show of the summer was ruined by a full moon. The sun reached its minimum sunspot level, almost guaranteeing there’d be no major eruptions of northern lights. Saturn’s rings turned edgewise and vanished. It was the year of the rat. As if to overcompensate, 1996 promises to inspire awe.
Not one but two total lunar eclipses occur over the mainland United States, a surfeit we’ll be treated to just twice more in the next 40 years. The first, on April 4, is just for people in the eastern half of the United States and Canada, who have the photographer’s dream of a weirdly distorted moon that rises already eclipsed. Then on September 27 the second shadowed moon floats over the entire continent. In a timely choreography between heaven ...
