BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy For your calendar - a lunar eclipse

For those of us in Europe and Africa, we're out of luck again. We won't see any part of the October 8th lunar eclipse. The whole thing can be seen (local conditions permitting!) in western USA & Canada, most of Japan, eastern Siberia, eastern Australia and across the Pacific. Many others will be able to view it as a partial eclipse.

Here is a map of the October 8 lunar eclipse. This full moon is also known as the Hunter's Moon.

If you're not in an area where the eclipse can be seen, there will be a live webcast starting at 9:00 UT courtesy of SLOOH.

Click to find out more about lunar eclipses. What causes them? Why don't we have one every month? Why does an eclipsed Moon tend to have a reddish color?

Here's something to look out for during the eclipse.

The eclipsed Moon is illuminated by reddish light. This is light that has come the long way round from the Sun through the upper atmosphere. As the light travels, the other colors are scattered, leaving the red. But some of the light also passes through the ozone layer. This light looks more turquoise, because the ozone absorbs the red light.

The best way to look for the turquoise is to use binoculars either towards the beginning or end of totality. Here is an an eclipsed moon with a turquoise edge from the lunar eclipse in April of this year.

In an earlier posting I gave a link to the SLOOH live webcast of the lunar eclipse. The Coca Cola Space Science Center in Columbus, Georgia will also be doing an eclipse webcast.