…and coming, July 27th the century’s longest lunar eclipse, one with a reddish hue or often known as a blood moon will take place but we wont be able to see it. Oh, you will if you happen to be in India, Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand or Europe but not in this hemisphere. Folks will be able to take in the site during the intervening night of July 27th and 28th where it will be visible for 1 hour and 43 minutes. July will also see another historic astronomic event when Mars will be closest to the earth for the first time in 15 years on July 30th and won’t happen again until 2035. It’s stories like this that take me back to my childhood days and a next door neighbor who was was very into astronomy and knew everything about events like this. He could look up in the sky and point out more than just the big and little dipper constellations> He knew the best time to look for shooting stars and we would spend many a summer night in the backyard counting them. In fact I was with him watching the moon landing on TV back in 1969. That love for astronomy eventually landed him a job in that field and has written several books on the subject so don’t even try to convince him that Neil Armstrong’s one small step really took place in the back lot of a Hollywood studio; I’ll bet he’s even got the moon dust and a couple of moon rocks to prove it. And don’t even try to tell him their fake.