January 20th, 2000

[11:00 AM] Speaking Of Eclipses Tonight, There is Starry Nights by Staff This isn't a new release, but the company's press release was so perfectly timed, we felt it deserved a mention. Sienna Software is pushing Starry Nights, their astronomy software for the Mac, in the face of tonight's total eclipse of the moon. According to Sienna Software: A total eclipse of the moon will be visible from North and South America the night of January 20th, and the early morning of the 21st in Western Europe. The motion of the moon around the Earth causes lunar eclipses. When the moon passes exactly opposite the sun in the sky, and moves into the shadow of the Earth there is a lunar eclipse. The start of the eclipse will be visible shortly after 9:00 PM EST, the full eclipse from just after 10:00 PM through to 11:20 PM and the entire eclipse will end before 1:30 AM on the 21st. You can safely watch the lunar eclipse with the naked eye, or through binoculars and telescopes. Eclipses are among the most awesome spectacles in nature, and one of the first duties of astronomers thousands of years ago was to predict eclipses – or at least to be on hand to perform the rituals that would cause the dreaded eclipse to hurry up and end! Only since about 600 BC could astronomers predict eclipses with any accuracy. Starry Night astronomy software makes it easy to predict and show eclipses far into the future and re-create eclipses that happened in the distant past. Download a demo of Starry Night that lets you view the eclipse as it will appear from your own backyard from http://www.siennasoft.com. You can find more information on Starry Nights at the company's web site. Starry Nights pricing starts at US$49 for an electronic download, a shrinkwrapped version priced at US$64, and a professional version priced at US$149. You can find more information on the eclipse by going outside and looking up. :-) Sienna Software