Look! Up in the sky!

Tonight, there is truly excitement in the air...and I'm not speaking metaphorically. That's right! Instead of the same tired, old birds, bats, chemtrails and high-speed dirigible races, there's actually interesting activity taking place above our heads.

For nerds - A total eclipse of the moon tonight is expected to be visible across the United States and much of the world. The moon will enter Earth's umbral shadow (the full shadow) at 8:43 p.m. ET (that's 7:43 p.m. Central, 6:43 p.m. Mountain and 5:43 p.m. Pacific) tonight. This will be the last lunar eclipse until 2010, by which time sentinent iPod robots could be our slavemasters and we probably won't be allowed to cast our eyes upward so you'd better enjoy it tonight.

For everybody else - Some time after 9:30 p.m, the US Military, apparently under the guidance of General Jerry Bruckheimer, is going to make their first attempt to shoot down that broken satellite that's going to crash to earth soon. The USS Lake Erie, a missile cruiser with an Aegis weapons system, will launch an SM-3 tactical missile toward the satellite from somewhere west of Hawaii. If they miss, they'll try again on Thursday or Friday. Of course, they're doing this out of concern for our safety and not in an attempt to test weaponry that could come in handy against a sentinent iPod robot army in the near future.