A total lunar eclipse happens every time the Earth comes in between the Sun and Moon and the Moon passes through the Earth’s shadow. Instead of the moon becoming completely dark and disappearing from the night sky, the light of the sun is bent and filtered by the Earth’s atmosphere shining a red glow on the moon. Think of it as every sunrise and sunset happening on the Earth at that moment coloring the moon! Because of its red hue during a total eclipse, it’s been called a Blood Moon.
Total lunar eclipses are more common than total solar eclipses and are visible to the entire side of the Earth it’s happening for, while total Solar Eclipses are only visible for a tiny area on Earth.
The next total lunar eclipse is happening next week for much of the Western Hemisphere and some of the easternmost parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. For more info on how you can see that click HERE.
While total lunar eclipses are much more common than total solar eclipses, if you include all partial eclipses lunar and solar eclipses are almost equally common; it’s just most solar eclipses are partial and visible in a very small area at sunrise or sunset. If you think of the geometry of it, that should be pretty clear.
True! But now I fixed the language in my post to write “total” every time I wrote eclipse (as I only had it there once and assumed it would be understood that way for the rest of the post). What I was going for here was total eclipses. And when it comes to a total lunar or total solar eclipse more people on Earth have a chance at seeing the former than the latter without having to travel for it.
Bloody marvelous!
how about that; it’s a fun comic AND educational! (who knew?)
Heh-heh; I can just see the astronauts feeling their way around on the moon during an eclipse…