I am giv­ing seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to not watch­ing the Acad­emy Awards for the first time in . . . counts on fin­gers . . . nine years.

Tonight’s total lunar eclipse, vis­i­ble from West­ern Europe and Africa to the Rocky Moun­tains, will be the last one until 2010. The moon will enter the Earth’s umbra at 8:43pm EST and will enter total eclipse at 10:01pm EST, where it will remain for 51 min­utes, until 10:52pm EST. The moon with then leave the Earth’s umbra at 12:09am EST on Thurs­day morn­ing. Total lunar eclipses last longer in total­ity than total solar eclipses because the Earth is larger than the moon, so its umbra is much larger than the moon’s, and the moon, being small, takes longer to pass through [ . . . ]

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Today was the third episode of this year’s Teen Tour­na­ment. Today’s Jeop­ardy! round included a cat­e­gory called “Right On The Money,” with trivia about U.S. cur­rency. The $200 clue was (approx­i­mately) “The cur­rent $2 bill fea­tures Thomas Jef­fer­son on the front and the sign­ing of this doc­u­ment on the back.” The con­tes­tant responded, “What is the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence?” and this response was deemed cor­rect. It isn’t. The back of the cur­rent $2 note does not fea­ture the sign­ing of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. It fea­tures the pre­sen­ta­tion of the draft of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence to Con­gress by the Draft­ing [ . . . ]

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STS-​​​​122 (finally!) sched­uled for launch at 2:45:30, smack in the mid­dle of today’s 10 minute launch win­dow. Offi­cial clock: Here is NASA TV, live, with approx. 60 sec. delay. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Atlantis, on a splen­did liftoff!