The Gaiascope (continued)

(see: Interspex, by Clark Nida)

Every six months or so, the Sun passes right behind the Earth, casting the planet’s shadow across the Full Moon, plunging it into eclipse. A particularly fine eclipse took place on 25 May 1975. What those inside the Gaiascope saw was the Earth’s night side, lit from behind by the Sun.

But in spite of the Sun’s photosphere being scarcely one-third the apparent diameter of Earth, the surface of the moon did not go entirely dark. Sunlight diffracted through the Earth’s atmosphere: light from the combined sunsets and sunrises all around the globe. It made the Earth appear as a brilliant red circle in the sky, bright enough to cast a blood-red glow on the eclipsed Full Moon, a glow which could be clearly seen from Earth.

Coming as the climax to a day of festivities, sixty thousand people sat in the Gaiascope watching the eclipse of the Sun projected onto the huge screen.

It was the night of the Ring of Fire disaster. A night in Selenean history to be perpetually mourned.

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