There's no question we live in an amazing place in the solar system.
We live far enough away from the sun to feel its warmth but not be scalded by it. We live on a planet that turns on its axis enough that most of us can live in an extremely comfortable environment and we experience day and night.
The earth is an equal partner in this in that it's turned on its axis so we can get summer and winter here. The winters here this far north can be trying but that's another issue. The moon's gravitational pull and to some extend the sun's gravitational pull give the ocean tides and help provide a constant refreshening of water.
But one of the most amazing things in the world happens when we see the moon cover the sun. For an ever so brief moment once every couple of years somewhere on the earth the moon is lined up so it completely blocks the sun. For a moment, we are in awe of how powerful and big these forces are in our lives.
You may have noticed if you were outside Monday that even without a total eclipse, the sky darkened as if there were clouds in the area (where there were none) and a noticable chill came over. It was nearly noon on a mid-August day and it felt like a late September breeze had blown up and was about to be colder.
We live in 2017, we have so much knowledge of these things and the geometry and physics around it, we know precisely when the sun was going to be covered and by how much. And yet we were still outside with special glasses and devices looking skyward, in wonder of what was before us.
No wonder ancients thought it was a sign from their gods.
Think about if intelligent life had developed on any of the other planets. On Mercury, there is no way a moon could survive based on its proximity to the sun. Venus has no moons and besides, has an atmosphere that's 96 per cent carbon dioxide. Mars has Phobos and Diemos, neither of which are big enough to create a full-on eclipse on Mars. While we may one day walk on that planet, there is no way to experience an eclipse the way we do here.
Travelling to Jupiter, that planet has four large moons among its 69. Most are so small they've only been discovered since 1975. Jupiter also has no surface like we would know it. We don't even know if it has a core but we can see that there's a swirling, thick atmosphere that it would be impossible for us to live in. No eclipses here.
Because they're so far away from the sun, it's a similar story with Neptune and Uranus.
The point of this is we live in probably the only place in the solar system where a moon can totally block out the sun, on a planet with a temperate climate and technology so advanced we can actually see it without creating permanent damage if we so choose.
Science tells us that the moon is spinning away from us by a couple of inches a year. Given the size of it, that's not so fast that we'll ever notice it in our lifetimes. But in 600 million years the moon will have spun out so far that it won't create an eclipse at all.
With that in mind, and the fact they only come every so often, it's a good chance to remind ourselves of how fortunate we are to live where we are, when we are.
