When the normally opalescent moon turns gore-red on the morning of November 8, don’t worry – Dark Lord Belphegor hasn’t been elected to Congress. (Yet.) It’s simply a glorious total lunar eclipse, which is extra-long-lasting this time around and will be a truly “democratic event.”
So says Andrew Fraknoi, a professor of astronomy at the University of San Francisco’s Fromm Institute who just so happens to have an asteroid named after him. “The entire moon is covered by the Earth’s shadow. That means that instead of a small part of the earth seeing it, every person on the night side of the earth — half of the planet — can see the eclipse. More people have seen an eclipse of the moon than a solar eclipse, because it’s so democratic.”
The eclipse will be visible from the Americas, Asia and Australia and begins on Tuesday, Nov. 8, at 1:09 a.m. Pacific Time. Totality lasts from 2:17 to 3:42 a.m. and the moon will return to fullness at 4:49 a.m. The eclipse is longer this month compared to 2022’s other total lunar eclipse, in May, because the moon is farther away from Earth and appears (relative to us) to be moving slower.
This will be the last chance to catch a full eclipse of the moon until 2025, so why not get out and enjoy it? Chances are you might be up, anyway.
“Since so many people on both sides of the political spectrum are worried about the elections and what they mean in the United States, they might be watching the news and get up in the middle of the night all worried,” says Fraknoi. “If that’s what you’re doing, then calm yourself by going out and seeing the splendid rhythms of nature doing their thing.”
You don’t need any special equipment. Just look up for the biggest thing in the night sky and watch as it goes dark. If you like the company of night owls, Oakland’s Chabot Space & Science Center is holding an in-person watch party with astronomy presentations from 11:30 p.m. to 4 a.m. ($15 adults, $7 youths). At the moment the weather forecast for the Bay Area has chances for rain early in the week, but if the clouds don’t cooperate, several scientific institutions will stream the eclipse live, including Griffith Observatory in L.A.
Got kids who will be watching the eclipse? Here’s some history and teaching lessons about the phenomenon from Fraknoi:
You’re looking at the shadow of our planet and that’s kind of cool because most of the time the earth’s shadow – which is black like all good shadows – falls into space, which is black, so we can’t see it. It’s completely wasted because there’s nothing to contrast it with. But during this time, we see the shadow of the earth on the full moon. So first of all, that’s pretty cool.
But then the ancients began to think about this, saying the shadow of a tree looks like a tree, the shadow of my little brother looks like my little brother. So here’s the shadow of the earth and it’s round. And if it’s just once you see it round, you might say well it’s like a pizza plate — it’s really flat and we’re seeing the round part. But if with eclipse after eclipse, wherever in the sky you see it the shadow of the earth is round, it pretty soon occurs to everybody it must be one of those shapes that’s round in every direction – a sphere.
So more than 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greek thinkers already figured out from this simple observation that we must live on a round planet. That got forgotten in the Middle Ages, and there are rappers today [here’s looking at you, B.o.B.] who’d like you to forget it, but we’re pretty sure now that the earth is round. This is direct evidence the kids can find out themselves.
Source: www.mercurynews.com