The Red Moon

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Weather permitting, we should be able to observe a Red Moon tonight Wednesday May 26th between 9:18 and 9:25 pm.

What is a Red Moon? The Romans used to call that a Blood Moon. This is what happens during a perfect Moon eclipse when the Sun, the Earth and the Moon are perfectly aligned, which is rather uncommon. The Earth rotates around the Sun in a plane called the ecliptic. The Moon orbit is not quite in the same plane, it is inclined (about 5 degrees). So most of the time, the Moon is either above or below the ecliptic. The points where the Moon hits the ecliptic going up, or down are called the ascending node and the descending node, respectively. 


 

The nodes slowly rotate around the Earth. So to get a moon eclipse, you need a full moon to occur right on one of these nodes. Predictably, when this happens, the next (or previous) new moon will be a sun eclipse. Sure enough a total Sun eclipse will happen on June 10th. Unfortunately it won’t be visible in Australia. While Moon eclipses can be seen anywhere in the dark hemisphere, Sun eclipses can be seen only from a small spot of the lit hemisphere.

Why will the Moon be red? Because when it is exactly located in the Earth shade, it can be lit only by sunlight going through a lot of atmosphere, about twice as much as your ordinary sunset light. So it is very red indeed. I look forward to seeing this tonight.

References:

Dates and times of eclipses visible in Lismore: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/australia/lismore

Lunar nodes picture:

https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/281193570465148113/



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