Tonight’s lunar eclipse will be a rich shade of red, due to refraction. From Discovery.com:
Weather permitting, skygazers in northern America and Europe are in for a treat in the early morning hours of Tuesday, when the first total lunar eclipse in almost three years is poised to turn the moon pink, coppery or even a blood red.
Coinciding eerily with the northern hemisphere’s mid-winter solstice, the eclipse will happen because the sun, the Earth and its satellite are directly aligned, and the moon swings into the cone of shadow cast by its mother planet.
The moon does not become invisible, though, as there is still residual light that is deflected towards it by our atmosphere.
Most of this refracted light is in the red part of the spectrum and as a result the moon, seen from Earth, turns a reddish, coppery or orange hue, sometimes even brownish.
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The eclipse runs for three and a half hours, from 6:33 GMT to 10:01 GMT (1:33 a.m. EST to 5:01 a.m. EST), although the stage of total eclipse — when the moon heads into the “umbra” cast by the Earth — lasts from 7:41 to 8:53 GMT (2:41 a.m. EST to 3:53 a.m. EST).
Ah, Nature. Always with the drama.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
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And just my luck; it’s pouring rain all week here on the west coast… 🙁