Unlike a solar eclipse, which can only be viewed from a relatively small area of the world, a lunar eclipse may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth. Unlike solar eclipses, observing a total lunar eclipse does not require any special equipment. Nevertheless, the total time between the first and the last contacts of the Moon's limb with Earth's shadow is much longer and could last up to 236 minutes.[3].

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. This day has been cloudy 80% of the time over the last two decades, according to timeanddate.com. Editor's note: If you capture an amazing photo of a lunar eclipse and would like to share it with Space.com for a story or gallery, send images and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com. Earth's atmosphere bends sunlight, so the planet doesn't cast a jet-black shadow. Earth's umbra extends into space far beyond the orbit of the moon. In this diagram, you can see that the moon’s orbit around Earth is at a tilt. A visibility map for the penumbral lunar eclipse of July 4-5, 2020. New York City will end U.S.

This causes the resulting coppery-red hue of the Moon to vary from one eclipse to the next. A Meteorite Slammed into the Moon at 38,000 MPH During Lunar Eclipse, Partial Lunar Eclipse Puts on a Moon Show 50 Years After Apollo 11 Launch, NASA, SpaceX delay launch of Sentinel-6 ocean-mapping satellite to Nov. 21. The red dot is Earth's umbra, which the moon will not pass through during any of the 2020 lunar eclipses. A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes through Earth's penumbra.

", "All you need to know about the 'blood moon, Animated explanation of the mechanics of a lunar eclipse, Search among the 12,064 lunar eclipses over five millennium and display interactive maps, Tips on photographing the lunar eclipse from New York Institute of Photography, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lunar_eclipse&oldid=986532909, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 1 November 2020, at 13:05. Some societies thought it was a demon swallowing the Moon, and that they could chase it away by throwing stones and curses at it.

If you can't watch the eclipse in person, the Slooh observatory will stream live views of the eclipse online beginning at 2:30 p.m. EST (1930 GMT), and you can watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of Slooh. If the date and time of an eclipse is known, the occurrences of upcoming eclipses are predictable using an eclipse cycle, like the saros. The entire eclipse will last 2 hours and 45 minutes. Thank you for signing up to Space. [12] In the nineteenth century, during a lunar eclipse, the Chinese navy fired its artillery because of this belief.

The event begins at 12:07 a.m. local time, reaches maximum eclipse at 2:10 a.m. and ends at 4:12 a.m. — but like Johannesburg, cloudy conditions may obstruct the view. At least two lunar eclipses and as many as five occur every year, although total lunar eclipses are significantly less common.

[9] Some Hindus believe in the importance of bathing in the Ganges River following an eclipse because it will help to achieve salvation. The Sun casts the Earth's shadow on the Moon's surface. When this happens, the Moon can turn red, earning it the nickname of Blood Moon. The final lunar eclipse of 2020 will appear over North and South America, the Pacific Ocean and its neighboring regions on Nov. 29-30. This diagram is not to scale: the moon is much farther away from Earth than shown here. The amount of refracted light depends on the amount of dust or clouds in the atmosphere; this also controls how much light is scattered. This type of lunar eclipse is relatively rare. The geometry of a lunar eclipse is shown in Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\).

The moon can be behind Earth but still get hit by light from the sun.

Partial Lunar Eclipse: July 16–17, 2019.

[4], The timing of total lunar eclipses are determined by its contacts:[5], The following scale (the Danjon scale) was devised by André Danjon for rating the overall darkness of lunar eclipses:[6]. This diagram from astronomer Fred Espenak illustrates the moon's path through the outer part of Earth's shadow on Jan. 10-11, 2020.

The event begins there at 3:45 a.m. local time, reaches maximum eclipse at 5:24 a.m. and wraps up at 7:04 a.m., which will be just 5 minutes after moonset. Although the Moon is in Earth's umbra, both the Sun and an eclipsed Moon can be simultaneously seen because atmospheric refraction causes each body to appear higher in the sky than their true geometric positions. On the flip side, viewers across the Pacific and the Philippines will see a lunar eclipse already in progress when the moon rises above the horizon. © Time and Date AS 1995–2020. Thus, the concurrence of a totally eclipsed Moon near apogee will lengthen the duration of totality. In particular, when the Moon is near apogee, the farthest point from Earth in its orbit, its orbital speed is the slowest. Because of this, a total lunar eclipse is sometimes colloquially called a Blood Moon. On average, a total lunar eclipse can be seen from any given location every 2.5 years. This is because Earth's atmosphere bends sunlight and indirectly lights up the Moon's surface. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon enters the shadow of Earth.

Even though Earth blocks sunlight from directly reaching the surface of the Moon during a total lunar eclipse, the Moon is still visible to the naked eye.