A Slice Of Life – Page 5 – The Pensive Reverie

Turning 3, and 28

On June 28, 2019, I turned 28 years of age, and The Pensive Reverie completed its online journey of three years with 83 posts, and a sum total of 105 followers. A lot has happened over the last three years, but first I would like to give a big shout-out to my followers and fellow bloggers who have been supportive to the blog’s growth. Thank you very much!

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Looking back to the night of June 27, 2016 when I published my first post in “Introducing Me, and the Pensive Reverie!” I had made a humble goal to reach at least 100 followers on the blog. Three years have flown since then, and having achieved this goal, I’m now even more motivated to further expand and build this blog, not to mention update my personal profile and status! That first blog post began with the question, “Who am I?” Three years down the road, I can now confidently ask myself a different question (one that builds on its predecessor), “Who do I intend to become?”

My name is Ajay Peter Manuel. I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, my home. I hail from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. As a teenager, I traveled around the world with my family. I would complete my elementary education at Cairo, Egypt, followed by my secondary studies at Khartoum, Sudan. I was around 19 years old when I first set foot in Edmonton to begin my higher studies at the University of Alberta. Following the completion of my undergraduate studies in Astrophysics, I would self-publish my autobiography, Our Last Summer: A Personal Memoir, in the summer of 2013. With the book’s publication I would acknowledge an annoyingly persistent identity crisis, and in the years that followed, with the help of my loved ones and friends, overcome the greatest obstacle in my life: myself.

Having learned the price of freedom and individuality, I embraced the mistakes and regrets of my past, learned to live my present, and to happily look towards the future without fear and hesitation. caption

This journey would culminate in the publication of a second book in A Little Bit of Everything, a treasure trove of memories involving the friends and family who had helped me along my journey, and most importantly my partner and soulmate. Back then, I wished to become an individual who “integrated his various passions in education, innovation, writing, art, music, science, critical thinking, accompanied with an endless appetite for life” and I continue to work hard on that front.

I’m happy to say that I have found my true-calling in becoming a writer and an artist. As I currently pursue a doctoral degree, I intend to further hone my skills on both these fronts, so that I may one day reach my penultimate goal of “sun-lighting” as a prominent science writer, and “moon-lighting” as a writer/comic book artist and animator. My dreams remain as far-fetched as they usually have been, but I can’t deny that as an individual my journey with The Pensive Reverie has motivated me to meet these challenges head-on, and with confidence.

Settling into the fourth year of this blog, I intend to stick to its original message in sharing my life’s adventures, hobbies, and interests. For all incoming and future visitors, I welcome you to read and engage with me on the posts I have written thus far, and hope that you enjoy them. For my current friends and followers, thank you very much once again for your support!

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Writing with a brick in my head

Writing with a brick in my head or taking a long walk down Stumped avenue, call it what you may, writer’s block is ultimately a frustrating experience. Supplement it with a dash of stubbornness, a pinch of OCD, and you have the annoyingly difficult jigsaw puzzle that was my writing process over the last week and a half.

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July will mark a year since I began writing the first draft of a script for my comic book and currently active writing project. There still remains a mountain of obstacles to climb considering the drawing portions that I have yet to begin. For the most part, I was thankful that compared to my earlier autobiographical efforts in Our Last Summer and A Little Bit of Everything, my pacing and writing were hitting the right chord.

At first, I attributed this to a different writing approach, revolving around heavy sessions of brainstorming and research, followed by focused writing.

Image result for anime writing gif — This was the complete opposite to the free writing that propelled my earlier projects.

I felt the change was all the more necessary and obvious as this comic book script was my initiation in writing a third-person narrative. On the outset, there were promising signs that I would scrape through this project without a detour down Block canyon, and that’s where I jinxed it. Dark clouds loomed along the horizon, and soon enough I was tumbling downwards in what seemed to be an endless spiral of frustration in my existential struggle to piece together the crux and climactic portion of the story.

Image result for anime despair gif — It cannot be…How could I have let this happen?

As usual, I fell prey to something that I had repeatedly advised myself to avoid: to let my ideas and thoughts, and not my research, shape the story. As integral as it had been for me to do extensive research on the fantasy elements I wished to include in my story, I had failed to keep up with my resolution in only allowing my creativity to guide my writing, and be inspired from what I learned from external references. Writing in the fantasy genre is an amazing experience, especially when there is so much material out there that just captivates one’s imagination. Somewhere along the way, I had lost the plot, and had allowed my research to limit rather than enhance my writing.

Image result for anime girl slap boy gif — A stern beat down from my in-house editor and partner woke me up and made me realize the solution was staring me right in the face.

What did I learn? Writer’s block is not fun. But, stressing about it ain’t going to help either. What matters is that one is willing to take a step back, to gain perspective, before stepping forward again. While this may be counter-intuitive, and for my fellow stubborn writers out there who like me (initially) may believe it an ostensible wasting of one’s time, it is very important to take a step back and approach your writing as though you were an impartial audience member.

Just as in science, where complicated problems often exercise a simple and elegant solution, the same could be said of writing. This is a familiar piece of advice for those entrenched in figure drawing where instructors often grill the student to take a step back and look at their work in progress to gain perspective and incentive in proceeding forward. The same applies for the mind as well, all I had to do was step back, take it easy, and, as Major Armstrong would likely agree,

Image result for anime motivation gif — Revel in the the truth and justice that is your sparkling freedom in writing.

The Final Exam

Exams are an annual/semi-annual ritual most students have to experience at some point during school or university. I myself had to write one last week. While I came out mostly unscathed, this particular occasion was all the more memorable given that it was truly the final curtain for my academic career as far as written exams are concerned; this final exam, was in fact, the FINAL exam of my academic life.

While my 20-year-old counterpart would have relished and wildly celebrated such a reality, I came out of the exam hall feeling quite pensive about the whole affair. It felt like the end of a long and occasionally tortuous journey that had molded my personal perspectives and opinions about written exams, and the present-day state of education.

Back in high-school, I had considered written exams as a means to test my skills and challenge my wits. By the time I had finished undergraduate studies, my viewpoint changed drastically, with written exams no longer being my cup of tea. I attributed this to the rapid environment that is university studies where exams just became another thing on that long checklist of things to do. Accompanied by tight and narrow margins of assignments and course project deadlines, written exams and studying evolved into a race against time, a means to a letter, than an actual endeavor for knowledge. I would finish my undergraduate studies quite frustrated with how things had turned about.

Ironically enough, those very frustrations set the ground for positive aspirations in the future. A few years after my BSc. degree, I would obtain an MSc. degree, following which I would begin my doctoral studies. Written exams still remained a part of my academic life but something changed. It took me a while to figure it out, but in the end, it was quite simple. I came to the realization that written exams are full of shit.

It became quite evident that my exam writing skills didn’t correlate nor were they directly transferable to improving and supplementing my academic experience or my aptitude for research. In my case, I stumbled upon this solution in the most straightforward manner possible: working as a research assistant for one year and proving to myself that I was actually “worthy” of my academic aspirations. Yet, there should have been no reason for me to be pressured into proving this to myself.

While written exams are popularly utilized as a means to weed out the student population in a hierarchical system of academic merit, it is not by any means the most efficient. On the other hand, it has served its purpose as the great illusion that often daunts a student’s psyche with regards to being an indirect and ineffective statement on their potential, and future success.

Multiple cases in point were my encounters with various students and peers who would find average turnovers in exams, and yet remain gifted personalities with great intellects and potential. It wasn’t rare to see the same batch of students also diverge from their original academic aspirations thanks to the lack of representation that written exams (and consequently, their grades) provided for their resume.

The sheer stress and pressure of exams translated to my transcript which to this date remains a beautiful collage of letters traversing the ABCDF scheme of the grading alphabet. Those same factors also translated to an inferiority complex of sorts, culminating in the completion of my undergraduate degree, when I felt that I was not good enough for my field of choice, and that I didn’t have the potential to seek and find success at greater heights.

It took me several years to overcome this complex. It helped to recognize written exams were not the absolute judgment of one’s potential as the education system so often makes it seem. I had to admit to myself that neither my skills or potential were absolutely defined by a piece of paper that I had to complete in a closed-room environment under set rules. This pushed me to work harder, not at writing exams or getting perfect grades, but at learning to enjoy my own pursuit of knowledge including its ups and downs.

Leaving the exam hall last week, I was glad that I had finished writing my final “final.” I could now look forward to fully and freely engaging my curiosity for knowledge, in whatever form that may be. I’m thankful to have come so far. My success in overcoming my failures in such a systematic hierarchy could largely be attributed to supportive supervisors, professors, friends, and most of all, my loving family. The trials and tribulations I faced in what had once seemed a downhill adventure in self-confidence and motivation did enact a toll upon my university studies, and yet, those very same experiences had served to strengthen me.

At the end of the day, my story may not be another’s. As such, I find it necessary in the current educational climate to find an alternative to written exams (at least in the context of university studies) in an effort to better represent and evaluate a student’s skills and knowledge. In my humble opinion, I would prefer to take the classical approach of the platonic academy where the emphasis towards knowledge and one’s academic mettle were proven through oral arguments and jousts that served to strengthen one’s ability to communicate and defend his opinions, as well as learn from that of others in what could be a collectively reinforcing experience.

I have had the opportunity to be involved in few such courses during my time at university, and have also found them to be the most rewarding. How to mold such an idea into a central gear in the current education system is a whole other problem in itself, and not one that I intend to discuss at this stage (though I do intend to come back to it soon enough).

Having said this, for now, I’m going to sit back, drink a cup of tea, enjoy the view (free of exams and assignments, but mostly a busy week catching up on research), and,

The Procrastinating Scientist

There he sits in his chair,
Ready to go through his checklist for the day,
Little does he know,
His mind has other games to play.

Experiments aside,
Its simulations for the time being,
To run the clock down,
Until lunch break comes calling.

Productivity is the motto at heart,
But thanks to an ample lack of sleep,
Such initial motivations,
Just fall apart.

Trying all he can and must,
To stay awake,
He takes a walk,
Maybe a short break.

Alighting onto the path of knowledge,
And hoping to get lost,
He picks up a review paper to go through,
Not aware his efforts will come at a high cost.

Page after page, with heavyset eyes,
He pores through the work,
Glancing every so often, tiringly, at the computer screen,
For any promising result, as would a wayward clerk.

To steady his periodic consciousness,
Intermittently, he is driven to source,
Those libraries of social media entertainment,
Youtube videos and Facebook of course.

Soon enough, work-hour comes to a close,
As the afternoon tide arrives,
And in its welcoming arms,
Life swings a surprise.

Lo and behold, he is struck by an epiphany,
A grasp at an ingenious thought,
Rushing, he notes down his idea,
Commending his mind on a battle well-fought.

Seeking the counsel of his Professor,
He wishes to share the excitement of his finding,
To his Jedi Master of sorts,
Having put to good use, his share of the funding.

And therein he meets an exhausted figure,
Forcing his will upon public grants all day,
Wishing nothing more than directing research,
That can bend to his singular way.

With only a few minutes at hand,
The padawan shares his thoughts,
The master applauding him,
On an idea well caught.

The day may have come to an end,
But the night remains,
For more experiments to begin,
And curiosity to retain.

For in science,
Results don’t come easy, as they say,
But procrastination, well done,
Can go a long way.

Chasing the memories of tomorrow

Setting aside the residual dream,
I welcome the gentle warmth of the sun,
Stirring, as I do,
Upon a waking dawn,
Undulating in its silent progress across the cosmic stream.

Breathing in the silence that stills my surroundings,
I relish the isolation of my existence,
In a moment that steals me away from the present,
My eyes, seeking beyond time,
Toward that distant horizon, where the future beckons.

Stepping forward onto the light,
I begin my journey,
Disposing my fears,
And following my heart’s desires,
In a wish to live free.

Shaking the uncertainties,
That question where the road ends,
I take comfort,
In the new beginnings,
That appear around every bend.

Gaining strength in every step of the way,
My shadow grows longer in the face of the rising sun,
Coalescing with others that appear,
From all walks of life, and spurring me forward,
As I begin to run.

Knowing that time waits for no one,
From the past, I borrow,
The happiness with which I may look back,
At what lies ahead,
Chasing the memories of tomorrow…

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Return of the Lost Blogger

If I were to wait a few more months, I could cap my absence to one complete year since my last update. Incidentally, the subject of that last post also sets the stage for discussion on the progress I’ve made thus far. I left describing the steep learning curve that accompanied my aspirations to become a writer/comic book artist. A year down the road, those same aspirations are now ambitions that I’ve decided to fully commit towards.

Setting aside the myriad happy developments in my personal life, I struggled to consistently keep up with my writing and my art-work. While this was initially frustrating, it turned out to be a gift in disguise. My lack of consistency was largely due to the hectic schedule of my doctoral studies. Rather than spreading myself thin, I decided to focus on my immediate concerns while taking it easy on myself (which being as stubborn and obsessed as I can be about my goals, it took some time getting used to).

Those immediate concerns culminated, just a few weeks ago, in a closed-room event involving a three hour session of what was my PhD candidacy exam. I’m glad to say that I was able to pass what was ultimately a challenging but wonderful learning experience. Having completed what is often perceived as the greatest obstacle in doctoral studies (aside from the final defense itself), I can now look towards a clear-cut, and focused journey in scientific research over the few years before the final defense.

But, this journey is not all about science. While I was busy preparing for the candidacy exam, I took every opportunity available to build on my thoughts and set the foundations for my art and writing aspirations. Funnily enough, stepping away from my writing and art work helped me discover what I was missing and the skills I required moving forward.

That being said, I have continued to slowly develop the script for my graphic novel. Although the story is fully developed in my mind, a few more months may be required before I complete the first draft of the script. In what will ultimately be a long-term project, I intend to transform the script into art and a full-fledged graphic novel. These efforts will also accompany the development of a new writing project involving a story of the political genre that has been in the workings for more than a year.

Much of this is just the beginning of what will be the first step towards my determined pursuit of a career in writing, and possibly one day, in animation. Having found a common love in writing stories and communicating scientific knowledge, I’ve decided that the Pensive Reverie will remain an outlet where I can share my daily adventures in the artistic landscape. Additionally, I will be starting a new blog that will be more focused towards discussing topics rooted in science and research in an effort to support what may become my future day job as a science writer (at least until I’m able to establish a foothold on my artistic aspirations).

This is all I have for today, but I will return very soon with a new post!

Writing Comics and All That Comes With It…

Comics have always been a part of my life. Rolling back the years to my childhood at my hometown in Madurai, India, I can distinctly remember the excitement I felt every weekend awaiting the delivery of the weekly comics magazines that accompanied the local newspaper.

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Siruvarmalar and Thangamalar, the literal translation beings “Kids’ Flower” and “Golden Flower,” provided a mashup of a children’s activity book mixed in with folktales, fables, and short stories presented in the format of a comic book.

(Left) Sample cover of a Siruvarmalar issue, and (Right) a sample comic strip from within detailing a mythological tale of the Hindu God Shiva. The characters observed are of my native language, Tamil.

I would spend hours on end pouring over the enormous collection of said magazines that my grandfather stored away in his closet, and that would be a weekend well-spent.

My family’s departure from India to Egypt would result in a break of sorts from comics and my full-fledged introduction to their animated counterparts in cartoons and anime. A few more years down the road, and following the commencement of my post-secondary studies at university, I would rekindle my love for comics in Japanese manga, and other Western staples including DC, Marvel, and an assortment of graphical novels.

As an avid comic-book fan and as an aspiring writer, the goal of kick-starting my own comic-book had always been on my mind. Now, two weeks into writing the script for what I hope will be my first graphical novel, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the diverse challenges that seem to crop up on every front as I try to bring my story together. A large part of these challenges originate from my unfamiliarity in tackling not only a new genre of writing but also a new medium.

giphy (1) — It’s a steep learning curve, but one worth embarking on.

So, what have I learned so far:

1. Writing a comic is not exactly the same as writing a novel. They say a picture is a thousand words. That has become the driving motto of my work thus far, being that I spend a lot of my time imagining the outline of my story before settling down on the script. It is like constructing a silent motion film in my mind.

2. Attention to detail is important, but so is also being concise with what you want to convey to your readers. In writing the script, I found my greatest challenge in getting used to the fact that my dialogues would remain in a world separate from the art work that will serve to provide the emotions to my story. Thus, I had to keep my dialogues effective, concise, and kind of resonate with the emotions I wished to convey in the scene.

3. Writing a script may seem relatively easy ONLY at the start. This was somewhat of a lesson in humility. I began with lofty expectations, assuming that I would be able to complete the script to my comic over the period of a weekend. Boy, was I wrong! Let’s give it at the least till the end of summer, or maybe the end of the year.

4. Don’t overthink. Every writer has a quirk that makes them unique. Overthinking may be a popular category for many writers, and I can certainly be counted in that special group. It’s difficult but sometimes the best way to go about writing a script, not to mention a story in general, is to not overthink to the point where you hinder your own writing.

5. Temper your expectations. This is more of a personal challenge, in that I’ve always been the greatest critic of my own works to the point that my expectations get heavier and heavier. In writing my script, on several occasions, I had to step back and tell myself to relax and not place lofty expectations on myself, especially when it was my first outing in a new medium. Most importantly, I’ve learned my lesson in patience and perseverance.

What I’ve said thus far may make it seem that resultant process of writing my novel script has turned me into

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The reality is quite different. As frustrating as the process can be, I’m relishing in the challenge, and it has only motivated me towards my goals. In 2 weeks, I have written 2 chapters, and that’s great while trying on one hand to balance my PhD studies. I hope to keep up the pace, maybe even go a little faster, and keep the ball rolling. Once the script is done, my efforts will be fully directed toward the necessary art work, but that’s a story for another day!

So What’s Next?

In my latest post, I discussed what exactly makes my imagination click.I thought it would be most appropriate to now carry forward the discussion to where my imagination takes me next, at least in the current scheme of things.

Ever since I started my PhD back in September 2017, my focus has largely been towards completing my course requirements for my degree. This has taken a predominant amount of my time, barring me from any measure of progress in my personal writing goals. Now, with the academic year having come to an end, I look forward to a summer extravaganza of writing and a revival of my previously planned projects.

The prior summer I had published my second work in A Little Bit Of Everything, a spiritual successor to my first work, Our Last Summer.

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Both books shared a similar origin in that the foundation of their plots were largely based on my life experiences. Having written the two books, I felt a great measure of happiness in coming to terms with various significant events that had occurred in my life over the span of the last few years.

Closing the page on my personal experiences, I wished to set the stage for my next writing challenge in a series of projects I had envisioned covering the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and politics etc. Intermixed with my new passion to write comics, I’ve spent the last year gradually aggregating ideas on the plots for two different books I intend to write over the course of this summer, and possibly well into next year.

One of these books will be a comic while the other will be a novel, with both being relatively unfamiliar grounds to tread upon. Having taken an extensive course in figure anatomy, I have only just begun my journey in becoming an artist. It is a difficult path, most recognizable in the horrible doodles I have had to endure with far whenever I put my pencil to paper. On a similar note, I have never written a novel, and in the case of the one that I have in store, my goal is to get it published at a traditional publishing house unlike my self-publishing efforts so far.

As I have done earlier, I hope to share my progress on this new journey, amidst my other weekly posts,with everyone on this blog. Tomorrow will be Day 1, and hopefully in a year from now, I will be close to, if not, accomplished my goals with regards to these two books. Let’s see what the year brings!

With that being said, I look forward to entertaining everyone the following weekend with a new post. Until then, toodles!

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What Makes My Imagination Click?

Just about anything to everything, and trust me, that speaks volumes.

In fact, my imagination is largely reflective of my approach to writing, which in the works I have published in Our Last Summer and A Little Bit Of Everything, can be described as an internalization of the reality that is my daily life. This process of internalization has paved the way for the construction of a landscape of epic proportions filled with a randomized but continuous menagerie and flux of thoughts and ideas that I frequently document in my journal. As such, more so than often, when I begin a new story, I would tend to look back to notes and inspirations I had garnered years earlier.

Moving forward from there, it would be a game of connecting the dots,

intermixed with the logical intricacies of how to put together a good story, and how well I emotionally synchronized with the characters and the worlds I wished to portray. Not surprisingly, the completion of said stories would leave me in an almost melancholic stupor stemming from my inability to accept the ending of the very realities I had created.

In that vein, I could say that I exercise my imagination at an almost constant basis through an assortment of activities from:

Transient visions drawing my interest on anything that randomly strikes my mind on an occasion where I may be bored as heck (particularly during university lectures).

Vivid dreams that would lead me out of bed and to the solitude of my desk on those frequent late nights where I would flesh out the details of my thoughts.

Inspirational knowledge from what I read in books, to what I watch on TV including anime, movies, the news, and of course, the internet, and at times even my own research. Speaking about books, it helps to live a block away from the Edmonton Public Library and Chapters bookstore, not to mention, a bunch of other outlets such as Wee Book Inn, making it all the more perfect to maintain my thirst for reading.

And last, but not least,

Personal introspection, which is almost like a favorite pastime of mine.

Bat-Mode on…Time to introspect on my decisions and choices.

This could be the sweet stock of my imagination, as a large part of it is infused with the inspiration I find in relating to my daily experiences, from everything including friendship, family, love, and life as it is. Consequently, a crucial element of my writing is to translate the complex intricacies of emotions and feelings I experience in confronting the realities I face or learn from in my daily life, perfectly summarizing the internalization I mentioned earlier.

And that’s pretty much all there is to it.

Though it may seem that all I have said thus far may be geared towards writing, I’ve recognized their greater application in my recent foray into art and comics. I could even go so far as to say that it is my own way of life, and one that I find personally fulfilling as it offers me the sweet reminder in not missing out on the beautiful opportunities that lie around every corner, waiting to tickle my imagination.

All the same, it also provides me the inspiration to follow up on the things that I love most, and in a way, bring the desires and wishes I express in my writing to become the reality I live and seek…

alone-anime-anime-art-anime-boy-Favim.com-1969798 — It’s always nice to take a step back and just immerse yourself in what is around you…

Lunar Awesomeness

Having fallen sick the prior weekend, I was hard pressed to be dedicated in my efforts toward a speedy recovery while ruing the lost opportunity of posting a new article on the blog. A sudden cold, and the ensuing fatigue left me out of sorts; the origins of which could be traced back to a persistent cycle of late-night at work along with irregular sleep.

The past week has helped me recover, and now that I’m back, I would like to recapitulate on my original plans for a post dedicated to the lunar awesomeness coinciding with the final and initial weeks of January and February 2018.

The night of January 31st hosted a special treat for amateur and professional astronomers alike with three lunar events coinciding upon the occasion: a supermoon, a blue moon, and a blood moon.

Unfortunately, the weather in Edmonton was less than accommodating with a rapid slew of snowfall enveloping the city at January’s end, and resulting in quite the cloudy forecast on the night of the occasion.

While this was a mild disappointment, I drew delight by watching the video recordings of the event that were made available online the following morning. With that being said, what do astronomers mean when they use the terms supermoon, blue moon, and blood moon? Your friendly neighborhood astronomer is here to explain.

Simply put, the supermoon refers to a full moon or a new moon where the moon is at its closest distance to our planet in its orbit. This makes the moon appear slightly larger and brighter than usual.

A supermoon would be at least 14% bigger and 30% brighter as opposed to a “normal” moon.

The moon’s average distance is 382,900 km from Earth. To get some context, if we were to scale the Earth’s size or diameter (12,756 km) to that of a beach ball (16 inches), the distance from the Earth to the moon would be an equivalent of 40 ft. Thanks to its elliptical orbit, the moon tends to experience both a closest (perigee) and farthest (apogee) distance of approach to our planet.

Now, this doesn’t imply that a supermoon will occur every month as the moon’s orbit changes orientation as our planet revolves around the sun. Thus, a full or new moon won’t always happen at apogee or perigee. 12-13 full or new moons are possible every year, with 3-4 usually being classified as a supermoon. The most recent supermoon occurrence will be followed by another at the year on December 22, 2018. The closest supermoon of this century is set to occur in the relatively far future on December 6, 2052.

A blue moon refers to an additional full moon that appears among the months of a year. The term can refer to either the third of four full moons in a season or the second full moon over a month of the calendar year. The existence of the second definition is due to an erroneous parallel drawn by amateur astronomer James Hugh Pruett (1886-1955). Having misunderstood the measures for calculating the seasonal blue moon, Pruett would publish an article in 1946 in the Sky & Telescope magazine writing instead that the a blue moon was the second full moon in a month. The phrase “blue” has nothing to do with the actual color of the moon. Nevertheless, varying atmospheric conditions may cause the moon to take on a tinge of blue e.g. elevated fires or volcanic eruptions that may result in particles being spewed into the atmosphere resulting in the preferential scattering of red light.

Lastly, the blood moon refers to a lunar eclipse, when the moon passes directly behind our planet and into its shadow. This occurs only when the sun, Earth, and moon are aligned exactly or at least closely enough, with the Earth smack-dab in the middle.

This is also why a lunar eclipse can only occur on the night of a full moon. January 31, 2018 witnessed a total lunar eclipse, a perfect alignment that resulted in sunlight being completely blocked by the earth’s shadow.

The moon’s “color” is nothing more than the reflection of the sun’s light upon its surface. During a total lunar eclipse, the only light seen is refracted or bent through our planet’s shadow. This light is mainly of a “red” nature thanks to the scattering of its bluer spectrum (an opposite process to what may occur in a “literal” blue moon). Therefore, a total lunar eclipse is also called a blood moon as the moon takes upon a reddish color during the event.

So, what is so special about January 31, 2018?

Well, this was the first time in 152 years that these three lunar events coincided with each other making it a rare gem of a beautiful lunar display. Pretty much everyone in the UK missed out on the spectacle while those in the US, Asia, Australia, and Russia got to see the full eclipse. But not to worry, if you missed this lunar awesomeness of a super blue blood moon, the next one is up for grabs in 2037.

Finishing up with this astronomy treatise for today, unlike the 19 year wait in the case above, I hope to see you all soon again the following week with another interesting story to share.

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