Mumbai: All eyes on the sky to catch (once in a) Blue Moon

“Maybe it is because we forgot to do the moon dance,” quipped a woman. Her remark lightened the mood only for a second and those heads that had turned to gaze and smile, snapped back to the endless vigil.

Meanwhile, others continued to monitor live feed on NASA’s YouTube channel, which was beaming an event that hadn’t taken place in 150 years – when the total lunar eclipse coincided with the Blue Moon and the Super Moon.

Others received updates on WhatsApp. “The moon has been spotted in Shriharikota,” exclaimed Srinivas Laxman, a space journalist who was part of 50-odd attendees at Bay View Café at Strand Hotel, where the Space Geeks Mumbai, a group of young researchers, and a company named Awestrich together organised a watch party on Wednesday evening.

Even as pictures kept pouring in from Bokaro and Bengaluru, a sighting over the Mumbai harbor remained elusive.

Then, just as Laxman decided to try his luck at the Nehru Planetarium in Worli, came the announcement via a laser pointer. “Can everyone see the moon?” called out Chintamni Pai of Space Geeks, as he circled a green ring around a patch of sky. Sure enough, seconds later, a faint disc became visible. With that, the tension broke and queues formed to look through the telescope.

Pai, a PhD candidate and at the University of Mumbai in the field of magnetic nanoparticles and magnetic fluids, and his friend, Virendra Yadav, a research associate at the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, spent close to a month looking for the perfect spot in the city to host Wednesday’s eclipse viewing.

“We went to the national park but the spot we had chosen was blocked by a hill. We also tried our luck at an under-construction 44-storey building in Wadala. But it had access issues. Finally, we settled on Bay View Café and carried out tests and computer simulations before finalising it,” said Pai.

Interest in Wednesday’s event also ran high and the organisers had to shut registrations by morning. “We had about 50 people and the most we could have accommodated here is 70. But if we hadn’t shut the registrations, at least 100 people would have showed up. There is definitely a lot of interest in Mumbai for these kind of events,” said Rihen Ajmera, the founder and CEO of Awestrich.

Pai and Yadav passed around nuggets of information every few minutes and asked the attendees not to rush for the telescopes. “The moon is in the shadow of the earth now,” Pai said at 7.15 pm adding, “It will begin to enter the maximum phase.”

Excitement continued to grow as the moon began to glow and close to 8 pm a tiny sliver light appeared at the far end and increased till it banished the shadow off the surface. All binoculars and cell phone cameras were now pointed straight towards the luminous satellite. “Does everyone believe now that there is a moon in the sky?” asked Pai.