Kyzyl-Adyr sky

A week ago something strange: a line of thirty or more small bright lights, one behind the other, travelling slowly across the sky like beads on a thread. Half of the parents called me. Several said they had written to Tulpar chat and the chat said it was a UFO.

I looked it up: a new American company launched many satellites at once and they travel in a train for a few days. Not UFOs, just a very long advertisement. The children were disappointed. I told them: this is also the sky now.

The longest lunar eclipse of the century. The whole valley was in bed, and the club, thirty-one of them with parents, was on the football field behind the school at one in the morning. The Moon red and low in the south-east, and below it, bright and orange, was Mars, closest to us since 2003. A red Moon and a red planet, side by side.

A mother from the village brought samsa at 2 a.m. in a basket. This is the proper way to watch an eclipse.

The Moon and Mars over the football field.

Yesterday the shadow of the Moon crossed America from one ocean to the other. We saw it on the internet at the school, with the sound turned off. Natalia's cousin in Oregon sent her photographs, and she brought them to the club. In one the whole sky has gone dark at midday, and there are people standing in a field with their arms up.

Natalia asked: "Will we have one?" I said not for a long time; I looked it up, and I will not be here for the next one over our valley. Perhaps she will.

Yesterday a partial eclipse of the Sun, a small one for us, about a fifth. The children, who have seen better, were not very excited. But a new boy of the 5th class, who had never seen an eclipse, looked through the filter, went silent, and later said that it looked like a coin.

I do not mind a small bite. Somebody sees it first.

The biggest Full Moon of the year rose over the ridge at sunset, orange and round. It's not "that" much bigger, I tell the children, only a bit, but it feels big. I stood at the school gate with a bag of apricots and watched them walk home looking up.

The Perseids were poor: the Moon was too bright. I counted eight. The honest number.