What's the Science Behind This Weekend's Super Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse?

Pedro_P

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During the total lunar eclipse tonight (Jan. 20), the moon will travel directly into Earth's shadow and turn into a rusty-red blood moon.
▼ But while it's mesmerizing to watch, lunar eclipses raise all kinds of questions. For starters, why is the lunar eclipse happening now, and why does the moon turn red when our only satellite creeps into the planet’s shadow?
The science of lunar eclipses is easy to understand, once you grasp that the moon's orbit is tilted relative to Earth's orbit around the sun. In other words, the moon circles Earth every month, but because it has a tilted orbit, it rarely passes through Earth's shadow.
However, about twice a year, the moon puts on a spectacular show — first, traveling directly through Earth's outer shadow, known as the penumbra. At this point, the moon will darken substantially.
"The moon will enter the Earth's shadow during the first hour, and it will look like a bite has been taken out of the full moon," Pat Hartigan, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University in Houston, Texas, said in a statement.
Once the moon is entirely shrouded by Earth's dark inner shadow, known as the umbra, it will look as if it's covered with a dull red filter. That’s why it's called a "blood moon." But despite this macabre moniker, this reddish color is actually quite romantic in origin: It's the culmination of light from all of the Earth's sunrises and sunsets bending through the Earth's atmosphere and hitting the moon, Hartigan said.
In fact, it's all of these sunrises and sunsetsthat allow us to see the moon, even if it's just a dim red, while it's hiding in Earth's shadow. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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