Especially for those CCCs planning on making the trip to Pinnacles Nat'l
Monument:

PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE VISIBLE IN NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE ON 23 MARCH 1997
    
    As some of you may already know, there will be a lunar eclipse during
    the early evening of Sunday, the 23rd. It will be a partial one: at maximum
    coverage, 92% of the moon will be obscured, leaving just a sliver of the
    northern hemisphere of the moon untouched. Expectations are that the
    part of the moon that passes through the Earth's umbra (the deepest part
    of the Earth's shadow) will attain a red or copper color.
    
    What will make this eclipse very spectacular is the proximity of 
    several bright objects to the moon during the eclipse: two very bright
    stars, called first magnitude stars, will be near the moon (these are
    Arcturus in the constellation Bootes and Spica in the constellation Virgo),
    as well as the planet Mars, which will be extremely bright. The very
    red color Mars always possesses will be accentuated by the planet's 
    current closeness to the Earth, will make it hard to miss.
    
    But most importantly, Comet Hale-Bopp should be near maximum brightness
    around the eclipse date. Observers on the West Coast will benefit from
    the eclipse removing much glaring moonlight from the sky at just the right
    time of night to facilitate fantastic views of the comet. 
    
    Here are the needed times of interest (these are in Mountain Time, so
    the East Coast folks should subtract two hours, the Central folks should
    subtract one, and the West Coast folks should add one -- as for the
    German folks who will see the eclipse just before sunrise ... well, I've
    lost count about how many hours, sorry about that :) ):
     
    Moon Enters Penumbra: 6:41 PM
    Moon Enters Umbra (noticeable darkening begins): 7:58 PM
    Maximum Darkness: 9:39 PM
    Moon Leaves Umbra (noticeable darkening ends): 11:21 PM
    Moon Leaves Penumbra: 12:38 AM
     
    Moonrise in NM will take place at 6:41 PM (to find out sunrise/sunset/
    moonrise/moonset information for your location, check out the home
    page of the US Naval Observatory at: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/srss.html),
    and the show will really take place entirely in the eastern sky. For
    observers further east, the event will occur later at night and hence
    in the West Coast, the action gets underway very shortly after moonrise.
    Again, European observers will see the eclipse occur just before sunrise.
     
    Enjoy the show! The next total eclipse that will be visible to US-observers
    won't be until January 20th, 2000.
     
    The folks at Sky and Telescope Magazine have created a very informative
    page describing the event -- for the curious ones amongst you, please
    check out: http://www.skypub.com/eclipses/m970323a.shtml.

Sounds like a pretty good show!  Looking forward to meeting y'all this next
weekend,

Gail

Gail Fitzpatrick
'87 GL Westi
Sacramento, CA         
<redwood@speedlink.com>