Sue Wootton
We live in Dunedin, on the east coast of Te Waipounamu, New Zealand’s South Island. It’s a beautiful place at any time, but every so often the planets (so to speak) align and gift us some extra magic. One of those every-so-oftens happened at dawn on Saturday morning, 28 July 2018, when the sun, Earth and full moon aligned (with Mars in close attendance) to produce a lunar eclipse.
Dunedin was going to be a great place from which to view the blood moon, but even better, the perfect location for experiencing a selenelion. A selenelion is a rare celestial event that occurs when the eclipsed moon is visible on the western horizon at the same time as the sun rises in the east.
We set an alarm. And so too, it turned out, did half the population of the city. We might be Homo Scientificus on the outside, but we are still Homo Lunus in our souls.