Community Corner

Poll: Do You Plan to Watch the Lunar Eclipse Tomorrow Morning?

The eclipse, which will be visible here before 5 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 10, can also be watched on the web.

There will be a rare red Lunar Eclipse this Saturday morning, but there's no guarantee around here that the clouds will part long enough for us to see it.

A press release from NASA about the eclipse says the moon also will appear supersized at the height of the eclipse, so if we can see it, it likely will be very striking. The moon will achieve full immersion in the earth's shadow at 6:05 a.m. PST.

Though it might not be as perfect as a live viewing, in case of clouds you can also watch the eclipse on the Slooh SpaceCamera.

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From NASA's press release

For people in the western United States the eclipse is deepest just before local dawn. Face west to see the red Moon sinking into the horizon as the sun rises behind your back.  It’s a rare way to begin the day.

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Not only will the Moon be beautifully red, it will also be inflated by the Moon illusion.  For reasons not fully understood by astronomers or psychologists, low-hanging Moons look unnaturally large when they beam through trees, buildings and other foreground objects. In fact, a low Moon is no wider than any other Moon (cameras prove it) but the human brain insists otherwise. To observers in the western USA, therefore, the eclipse will appear super-sized.

It might seem puzzling that the Moon turns red when it enters the shadow of the Earth—aren’t shadows supposed to be dark?  In this case, the delicate layer of dusty air surrounding our planet reddens and redirects the light of the sun, filling the dark behind Earth with a sunset-red glow. The exact hue (anything from bright orange to blood red is possible) depends on the unpredictable state of the atmosphere at the time of the eclipse. As Jack Horkheimer (1938-2010) of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium loved to say, "Only the shadow knows."

Atmospheric scientist Richard Keen of the University of Colorado might know, too.  For years he has studied lunar eclipses as a means of monitoring conditions in Earth's upper atmosphere, and he has become skilled at forecasting these events.

"I expect this eclipse to be bright orange, or even copper-colored, with a possible hint of turquoise at the edge," he predicts.

Earth's stratosphere is the key: "During a lunar eclipse, most of the light illuminating the moon passes through the stratosphere where it is reddened by scattering," he explains.  "If the stratosphere is loaded with dust from volcanic eruptions, the eclipse will be dark; a clear stratosphere, on the other hand, produces a brighter eclipse.  At the moment, the stratosphere is mostly clear with little input from recent volcanoes."


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