Lunar Eclipses are a simple yet beautiful phenomenon. All you’re watching is the moon passing behind Earths shadow, blocking light from the sun as it orbits the Earth. Compared to solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are very common. I’ve seen about 6 lunar eclipses in my lifetime in Australia. I’m yet to see a solar eclipse. Lunar eclipses last last several hours. Solar eclipse only last several minutes and over a very small portion of the Earth making their window of viewing miniscule.
Physics behind a Lunar Eclipse
A lunar eclipse requires the moon to pass through the Earths shadow (Umbra and penumbra). This doesn’t happen every month due to the Earths rotation axis. The moon orbits on the same axis, most times the moon will avoid the umbra and penumbra as it goes behind the Earth however at least once a year the alignment is perfect for a lunar eclipse.
Why does the moon appear red?
Have you ever seen a sunset and wonder why the sun appears red? It’s our atmosphere bending sunlight towards the red end of the spectrum. This only occurs at low angles due to thick amounts of atmosphere the light has to travel through. Some of the light will travel through our atmosphere and travel back out into space. During a lunar eclipse this light will reflect off the moon and is the reason it appears red. We are seeing light that has been bent from our atmosphere.
September 8th Eclipse
Unfortunately Australia was in the tail end of the eclipse. About half of the Earths continents were able to see it. In Nowra the eclipse commenced at 2am. Totality commenced at 3:30am and lasted till 5am.
I gotta admit, this was a bit early for my liking. I woke up at 3am and immediately wanted to go back to sleep. I had a look outside to see there was a thin layer of cloud however the moon was still visible. I waited until 3:30 and took several photographs over the course of one hour. The eclipse was quite beautiful, the moon appears quite faint and red. The mirrorless camera I used had the upper hand shooting these beautiful photos at around 4am.
