We're off to Miami tomorrow so thought I'd add a post now before we go. Some things to watch out for over the next few days: across North and South America, Europe and Africa you'll be able to watch (weather permitting) the full moon dim into a dark orb over the weekend (Saturday EST) as the moon drifts through Earth's shadow. Yup, it's a total lunar eclipse. At its peak, the moon will hang eerily in the night sky like a dark, reddish-orange coal. I watched a full lunar eclipse years ago in New Zealand. I was about 15 at the time and just happened to look up into the sky as it started. I ran inside and grabbed an instant camera and took a photo ..of course the photo was just completely black ..duh. It was pretty freaky watching the Earth's shadow creep across the face of the moon ..I remember it clearly.

Weather cooperating, people in the eastern United States, South America, Europe and Africa will witness the entire eclipse. It will already be under way when the moon rises around sunset in the western United States, and it will not be visible at all in Asia and Australia. The eclipse reaches totality at around 8:06 p.m. EST Monday. The stage when the moon, Earth and sun are lined up precisely and the moon passes through the darkest part of Earth's shadow lasts just 24 minutes.

But wait! There's more! Saturday's lunar eclipse will be followed by the Leonid meteor shower, a total solar eclipse over the southern hemisphere, and a chance for more auroras if the sun stays active (apparently there's been red and green aurora displays as far south as Florida thanks to big explosions on the sun recently, but I haven't seen any of these yet). Another eruption Tuesday on the sun may rank among the most intense solar events ever recorded. But the explosion was aimed away from Earth, meaning it would have little impact here.

The Leonid meteor shower display will peak first for viewers in western Asia, Indonesia and Australia before dawn on Nov. 14th. For western Africa, western Europe, North America and western portions of South America, the display peaks a few days later, on Nov. 19. Viewers should be able to see 100 or so meteors per hour, some of them fireballs.

Nov. 28 also will bring a total solar eclipse, although seeing it will require a bit of travel. It will be visible only in Antarctica. heh.

Another quick note worth mentioning is that Microsoft Corp. is creating a $5 million reward program to help law enforcement identify and convict those who illegally release worms, viruses and other types of malicious programs on the Internet. The first two rewards ($250,000 each) will be for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the spread of the MSBlast.A worm and the SoBig virus unleashed earlier this year. Good to see action like this happening. Ok cya in a few days.