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"Blood moon" -- total lunar eclipse (April 14-15)

MoodyBlues

MoodyBlues

Compassion is cool!
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You might want to head outside tonight to catch a glimpse of the 'blood moon,' a total lunar eclipse.

Total lunar eclipse tonight: How to see the 'blood moon' - latimes.com

Total lunar eclipse tonight: How to see the 'blood moon'

By Deborah Netburn
7:47 AM PDT, April 14, 2014

Sky watchers, get ready! There is a total eclipse of the moon coming Monday night and you don't want to miss it.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the sun, moon, and Earth align so that Earth's shadow falls across the moon's surface. Monday night's lunar eclipse is a total eclipse, which means Earth's shadow will cover the moon completely.

The moon won't be blacked out by our planet's shadow. Instead, it will take on a reddish hue -- anywhere from a bright copper to the brownish red of dried blood.

Perhaps this is why we are seeing the term "blood moon" popping up all over the Internet. (For more on that, read Total lunar eclipse on April 14-15: What is a 'blood moon'? )

The eclipse is visible from just about the entire continental United States, as well as Central America and parts of South America. If you live on the West Coast, you are especially lucky because you won't even have to stay up too late to see it.

To watch the whole show from start to finish, your moon gazing should begin at 10:20 p.m. PDT, when the first faint shadow will start to fall on the moon. This is known as a penumbral eclipse, but be prepared -- it's subtle.

The show gets more interesting at 10:58 p.m., when the partial eclipse begins. It should look like a little bite was taken out of the moon. Continue to look up to see the Earth's shadow move across the moon, covering more and more of its surface as the minutes pass.

By 12:07 a.m., the entirety of the lunar surface will be in Earth's shadow. It will be glowing red, because even though our planet is blocking out direct light from the sun, the light of all the sunsets and sunrises on Earth still make it to the lunar surface.
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Cloudy here too

On a side note, am I the only one who thought of this when they first heard about this?
 
Haven't gotten an update, but I imagine it'll be cloudy here as well. I'm up and out for work around 4:30 and got to see a beautiful fullish moon this morning but may not be the case tomorrow. :(
 
I have a general question about eclipses. How long has man been able to calculate when they will occur? Has it been over 100 years? It seems like it would take not only a good understanding of both the positions of planets and their movement, but a lot of calculation power.
 
Goodspike said:
Has it been over 100 years?
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Yup, much longer. Columbus predicted a lunar eclipse back in the early 16th century, and used astronomical tables compiled even earlier. The Chinese had mastered lunar eclipse prediction by 205 AD, and there's enough surviving documentary evidence to suggest that the ancient Egyptians and Greeks were able to reliably predict lunar eclipses well before that.
 
Goodspike said:
I have a general question about eclipses. How long has man been able to calculate when they will occur? Has it been over 100 years? It seems like it would take not only a good understanding of both the positions of planets and their movement, but a lot of calculation power.
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I don't know offhand, but I think it's been a lot longer than 100 years.
 
EarlyMon said:
As I've seen a total lunar eclipse before, I don't think that they're that rare.
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They may not be exceptionally rare, but they are beautiful!

total-lunar-eclipse-april-15-mt-lemmon-skycenter-3.jpg
 
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