The Eclipse You Might Be Overlooking
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe case for the lunar eclipse., Don’t overlook lunar eclipses! They are easier to catch than solar eclipses.
The April 8 solar eclipse isn’t even here yet as I write this, but it has already caused quite the stir. Bookings for hotels in the path of totality have increased by over 300 percent. A Texas county has called a state of emergency, as it expects the population to nearly double due to eclipse tourists. Some schools are closing for the day—partially so students can experience the event, partially for safety reasons. All so that folks can watch the sun darken for 3½ to 4 minutes.
No hate for the hype: Solar eclipses are magical experiences. And they’re quite rare, at least for people who aren’t willing to travel across the world to see one. Though total solar eclipses happen somewhere on Earth every year and a half or so, any given spot will experience totality only about every 375 years. So if you’re in this event’s path, it’s fair to say that it could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—at least when it comes to putting in as little effort as scooting down to your local library to grab a pair of solar glasses and taking a late lunch break outside.
But if you want to see another awesome celestial event (with the added perk of not fighting traffic), I bring to your attention the other type of eclipses: the lunar ones.
In all cases, an eclipse occurs when the Earth, moon, and sun line up so that one body is obscured by another. Solar eclipses happen when the moon is positioned between the Earth and the sun, blocking our view of the sun. And lunar eclipses result when the Earth is positioned in between the moon and the sun, blocking the sun’s light and thus altering the appearance of the full moon. Eclipses don’t happen every month, because the moon’s orbit (around the Earth) and the Earth’s orbit (around the sun) are tilted relative to each other. But every year, there are at least two lunar eclipses and two solar eclipses, and sometimes as many as seven.
That’s right: solar and lunar eclipses happen with the same frequency. But it’s much easier to catch a lunar one because they can be seen from half of Earth, as opposed to the narrow swath in which a solar eclipse is visible. ‘As long as you’re on the right side of the Earth, you’re good,’ says John Moores, a planetary scientist at the Canadian Space Agency.
That means no need for travel—and no need for any special glasses either. To see a lunar eclipse, simply try to find as dark a spot as you can and curl up for some skywatching. Maybe bring some popcorn too, because watching a lunar eclipse vs. a solar one is the difference between a feature film and a short. Unlike minuteslong solar eclipses, the lunar version can last a few hours. The Earth is much bigger than the moon; since we cast quite a large shadow, the little moon will be caught within it for a longer time.
Watching a slow shadowing of the moon has its own magic. ‘You get to see this gradual transformation of the moon, from this white, full disk, very bright. And then it dims, and then you see the edge of the Earth’s shadow go across it,’ Moores says. ‘There’s something about it that just grabs the imagination.’
There are three types of lunar eclipse, depending on where the moon sits in Earth’s shadow. Because the sun is so huge, the Earth actually casts two distinct shades of shadows when it blocks the sun’s light. Directly behind the Earth is its main shadow—very dark and narrow, and called the umbra. But the Earth also casts a wider, and lighter, shadow, called the penumbra, which extends away from the planet at an angle. (Here’s a helpful illustration.) When the moon sits in that lighter shadow, it creates a penumbral eclipse, which dims the moon ever so slightly. When the moon passes partially into the umbra, it creates a partial eclipse, which looks as if there’s been a bite taken out of the moon. And when the moon is fully in the umbra, that’s a total eclipse.
During a total lunar eclipse, the moon doesn’t disappear—it turns red. That’s because, even though the sun’s light is blocked by the moon, the Earth’s atmosphere holds light. ‘You have this lit-up ring, like a rim light around the Earth,’ says Moores. ‘And so that will illuminate the disk of the moon.’ The reddish color comes from the light being refracted by particles in the atmosphere.
That’s the science-y way of saying something pretty spectacular: The red light on the moon is actually the sunlight from every sunset and every sunrise happening at that moment on Earth.
The red color is why total lunar eclipses are dubbed ‘blood moons.’ The closer the moon is to the Earth during an eclipse, the redder it looks, making it a super blood moon. There’s a whole host of names for these events, depending on when they occur—you might remember the super blood wolf moon of 2019, for instance.
When’s the next lunar eclipse? Well, they always occur a couple of weeks before or after a solar eclipse: One actually happened almost two weeks ago, on March 25. Maybe it was overshadowed (pun intended) by the solar eclipse, but it was also a penumbral eclipse, which is less noticeable, so no need to fret about missing it. The next total lunar eclipse will be March 14, 2025, for the Pacific, Americas, Western Europe, and western Africa. (You can check out a detailed lunar eclipse guide here.)
So, after your solar eclipse jaunt, don’t forget to mark your calendars for a bit more real-life magic casually going on in the sky right above our heads. There’s a show happening more often than we realize.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2024/04/lunar-solar-eclipse-how-frequency-blood-moon.html
Ref: slate
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