This week is the longest lunar eclipse, lasting a whole hour and 43 minutes. This eclipse will provide some cool sights to more than half the globe.
The eclipse this Friday (Saturday for those of you in the far East) will cause the Moon to look like it is burning red. This color comes from the light passing through the Earth’s atmosphere. Our atmosphere scatters shorter wavelengths or basically catches the blue light given off the sun. The longer wavelengths pass through the atmosphere. Thus when we look at the moon it is only receiving the longer red wavelengths that are able to pass through Earth’s atmosphere.
This lunar eclipse is also going to be the opposite of that supermoon eclipse just a couple years ago. The Moon is actually farthest from the Earth at this time so it is going to look smaller than usual, a “Mini Moon”. So be sure to get your minis and check this event out!
Total Lunar Eclipse by Joel Tonyan
Before we get to the specifics of when to look, check this map to see exactly what will be visible from your town. If it is the no Eclipse visible, don’t worry! Skip to the bottom to find out how to watch online.
Solar and Lunar Eclipses in 2018 by Sky and Telescope
There are two moments you can start to see Earth’s shadow pass over the Moon. There is when the hazy outer edges of the Earth pass and then the dark inner shadow passes. You can see this when you hold your hand under a light source and as you move it close to and far from the light you notice the edges get a little blurred on the shadow while the center is still dark. This is similar to how the light passes around the Earth onto the Sun; you will see that blurry edges first or the penumbra before the partial officially begins. Now that you know what the penumbra is, let’s talk about times!
Start of Penumbra (hazy outer edges show on Moon): 1:14pm EDT (17:14 UTC)
Start of Partial Eclipse (the umbra or dark shadow is seen): 2:24pm EDT (18:24 UTC)
Start of Total Eclipse (entire Moon is dark and red): 3:30pm EDT (19:30 UTC)
End of Total Eclipse: 5:13pm EDT (21:13 UTC)
End of Partial Eclipse: 6:19pm EDT (22:19 UTC)
End of Penumbra: 7:28pm EDT (23:28 UTC)
Slooh is having a live event for the lunar eclipse. It starts at 1:00pm EDT (17:00 UTC) and will last the length of the eclipse. The stream does require a subscription to watch BUT the free level does get to view the streams… you just have to set up another one of those account usernames and passwords to forget.😆* Check the stream here.
Happy Observing!
* So my mother proofreads all of these. (She has a PhD in linguistics so I could theoretically hire her to do that job….but I don’t.) Anyways the only creative content change she has ever made was to add an emoji after that sentence. I am letting y’all know to mark this special occasion but mostly to tell y’all I am not laughing at my own joke… that was her.
