The night we nearly saw a 'blood moon' (and why I love near-misses in astronomy)

Stargazers have trigger words — total, bright, peak, maximum, best.

But observing the sky is often more interesting when something seems neither one thing nor the other.

A case in point was the almost-total partial lunar eclipse we just witnessed.

From where I watched, early on Aug.

28, Earth's shadow reached its maximum across the lunar surface, covering 96.2% of it, as the moon began to sink in the west.

A thin part of the lunar surface remained outside the darkest part of Earth's shadow, and the surface never did quite go red.

At maximum eclipse, the moon looked like a sliver — totally unlike a crescent moon, and something very odd to behold — and came within a fingernail of becoming a totally eclipsed " blood moon ." Astronomy and stargazing are full of this sort of near-miss.

A comet that nearly becomes bright enough to tell your neighbors about, but ultimately becomes nothing more than a smudge in binoculars that few can even find, let alone be impressed by.

A meteor shower that's hyped as the strongest for years that doesn't live up to expectations.

Or the worst kind — a cloud deck that clears a few minutes after a total solar eclipse comes to an end.

We pretend these moments are failures because they do not match the headline version of the sky.

But it's often the "almost" part that keeps the imagination alive.

Beyond the headline act A total lunar eclipse happens only when the entire moon passes into Earth's dark umbral shadow.

On Aug.