Today's a Super Special New Year's Eve

A once-in-a-lifetime event, even. It's not that I have crazy wonderful plans for the evening, today is especially magical and exciting is because there's a blue moon* AND a lunar eclipse! On New Year's Eve!

To put this into perspective, there are usually a couple lunar eclipses a year, and blue moons happen every couple of years or so. But a blue moon on New Year's Eve happens about every 20 years, and a blue moon gets eclipsed on New Year's Eve every 90ish years.

I'm a little bummed out that the eclipse won't be visible in North America, but I'll console myself with the fact that it's just a partial eclipse anyway. And that I'll be able to see a total lunar eclipse about this time next year.

I hope that your night reaches the potential of this oh-so-exciting day and your second decade of the millennium is even better than the first. Happy 2010!

* The blue moon of tonight is not the same as the bluish moon seen in this picture. This blue-hued moon happens when the air's filled with dust and other tiny particles that scatter light so that the moon looks blue. They're not incredibly rare, but they don't happen all that often, hence the term "once in a blue moon."

The type of blue moon that's happening tonight is the second full moon of a month or the 13th full moon of a year. It's also called a blue moon because it happens just "once in a blue moon." No idea why whoever decided this term didn't go with something less confusing.