Original Post 02.16.2008

2008 Lunar Eclipse

On Wednesday evening, February 20th, 2008, the full Moon over the Americas will turn a delightful shade of red and possibly turquoise, too. It’s a total lunar eclipse—the last one until Dec. 2010.

The Sun goes down. The Moon comes up. You go out and look at the sky. Observing the eclipse is that easy. Maximum eclipse, and maximum beauty, occurs at 9:26 pm CST (7:26 pm PST).

Perhaps the most spectacular astronomical events that one can observe without a telescope, lunar and solar eclipses were considered omens of great fortune or complete disaster in ancient times. We now know that the occurrence of eclipses is a consequence of the orbits of the Earth and Moon with respect to the Sun.

The Earth orbits the Sun once a year, and the Moon orbits the Earth once a month; it turns out that the planes of the Moon’s and Earth’s orbits are almost, but not quite, aligned (the offset is about 5 degrees). This means that every once in awhile (a few times a year), the Moon passes through the Earth’s shadow at night, blocking our view of the Moon: we call this a lunar eclipse.

For more indepth look at this weeks lunar eclipse, check out NASA’s site online.