Lunar Eclipse Stuns Many Tuesday Morning

A blood moon graced the skies this morning! Hopefully the cloud cover cooperated where you were.

What is a blood moon? It's another name for a total lunar eclipse, a phenomenon that occurs when a full moon passes directly through a planet's shadow, changing the bright white reflection to a much darker shade of red. This time, the dark red shade, known as totality, will last about an hour, while the Moon's shadow will gradually increase and decrease for about 90 minutes before and after totality. This means the entire event will last about 4 hours.

This eclipse is known as a "total" lunar eclipse, named for when the entirety of the Moon gets covered by Earth's hard shadow, known as the umbra. It's different from a solar eclipse in that the Earth is between the Moon and Sun, as opposed to a solar eclipse when the Moon is between the Earth and Sun.

Unfortunately for folks on the East Coast, the amount of time to see totality will be cut short, lasting only about 20-30 minutes (depending on your longitude) as the moon sets. Full eclipse times are in the image at the top of the page.

For folks in Central, Mountain, or Pacific time zones, all of totality should be visible before the moon goes down. Some of the partial eclipse after totality may be cut short.

Pacific times for the eclipse are in the image below!