On the night of April 15, the red planet Mars was at its closest point to Earth, facing Earth, and so would appear to be the brightest. It also happened to be full Moon and Mars would sit right next to it. In addition, the Moon would get into a total eclipse that night, starting with a partial eclipse here in Vancouver in the late evening, with full eclipse conveniently at mid-night. The timing was ideal. The eclipse starts as soon as the sky gets just dark enough (by 10 PM), so we do not have to stay up late to watch. All these together make up a beautiful night of rare stellar event to watch.
As for lunar eclipse, there is a famous legend for Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of the New World. It comes in slightly different versions. Essentially it is as follows.
In early 1500’s, during one of the later expeditions back to the Caribbean (after his initial 1492 Voyage of Discovery), Columbus and his crew were stranded on an island inhabited by Native Indians, who refused to give them food as the Columbus crew was not nice to them. It so happened that from the “sailors almanac” Columbus knew that there was going to be a lunar eclipse on a certain night coming up, with exact times listed. So he went to the Indians and told them that God was angry with the Indians for not feeding the Columbus team and so would “extinguish” their Moon on a certain night. Of course, the Indians did not believe him, until the eclipse night when they saw the Moon really disappeared. They became “convinced” and very afraid, and so they brought food to Columbus and begged him to talk to God to save the Moon. Columbus reluctantly “agreed” and soon the Moon re-emerged. The Indians “thanked” Columbus, and his crew was well fed since.
Although the legend is very entertaining, I find it too good to be true. Firstly, the tool for the calculations of movement of celestial bodies, the Newtonian Mechanics and the Law of Universal Gravitation, were not established until 150 years later in the 1660’s, so how could people of the day possibly predict an eclipse precisely to the hour for Columbus to play such a game? In fact, people at that time still believed the Sun revolving around the Earth, not the other way round. The great astronomer Copernicus worked on his Heliocentric Theory (that the planets go around the Sun, not the Earth) from 1506 to 1530, long after this Columbus trip to America.
Secondly, since lunar eclipses are quite frequent (occurring several times a year), the Indians must have seen enough of this “God extinguishing the Moon” show long before Columbus arrived, and so should not fall for his trick so easily.
IMHO, the legend was simply one made up by “historians” for fun, in particular, most likely by Columbus’s son (who wrote the initial story) as a spicy fairy tale to glorify his dad. On the other hand, it could also be made up by Columbus himself. He probably got the Indian food through some un-speakable means, and had to cook up a divine story to cover it.
As for viewing this “perfect” eclipse of April 15, the story ended just like many other stories in my life. When I was presented with a great opportunity, I had to miss it, often for simple or stupid reasons.
For this extremely rare stellar event, the sky was simply cloudy over Vancouver on the night of April 15, 2014. Columbus’ trick would have fail if the sky were otherwise on his night.
Traveller's space 