I stayed up for this morning’s lunar eclipse, but alas…clouds (the BBC had a good stream, though). It was still cool to see it live. Check out this timelapse video, set to a Debussy nocturne no less. It is thought that the moon was created by a massive collision between the early Earth and another planet, which scientists call Theia (after the Greek mother of the moon goddess, Selene). Scientists posit that the two got intimate some 4.5 billion years ago, while the solar system was still cleaning up its unpredictable afterbirth. The impact enlarged Earth and gave it a debris ring that eventually streamlined into a disk (think Saturn), the major particles of which coalesced over millions of years into a single, orbiting sphere, the moon. Think of it as the Danny De Vito to our Arnold Schwarzeneggar. We’re messed up twins. We’re in the moon and the moon’s in us, and every once in a while it’s cool to be reminded of that, as we were late last night.