Watching the moon turn red during the lunar eclipse in March

A total lunar eclipse washes the moon across the western hemisphere on a Thursday night on a moonlit night.

The best views are from North and South America. There are some glimpses of Africa and parts of Europe.

The solar eclipse of the moon occurs when the moon, the earth, and the sun just do so. The Earth casts a shadow that can partially or completely suck the moon.

During a partial lunar eclipse, the Earth’s shadow appears to bite the moon. The full moon is covered with total EC, and makes copper red red because sunlight filters the capillaries through the Earth’s atmosphere.

According to NASA, lunar eclipses and solar eclipses occur anywhere from four to seven times a year. Last September, partial lunar eclipses in America, Africa and Europe adored the sky, with the last total lunar eclipse in 2022.

How to watch the lunar eclipse

The so-called Blood Moon will be visible for about an hour from 2:26am Eastern on Friday morning. Peak viewing is near 3am in the East.

To see it, I venture outside and look up. No solar eclipse glasses or special equipment is required.

“As long as the sky is clear, you should be able to see it,” said Shannon Schmoll, director of the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University.

The setting of the moon may make it difficult to see solar eclipses in Europe and Africa.

“It’s really a North and South American solar eclipse,” said Michael Faison, an astronomy expert at Yale University.

If you missed it, please mark the calendar on September 7th. Another lunar eclipse cleans parts of Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe. Parts of the Americas will acquire their next flavor in March 2026.

The history of solar eclipse

Civilization has been viewing and interpreting lunar eclipses for thousands of years. According to historian Zoe Ortiz, ancient people knew more about the heavenly bodies than we would give them credibility.

“They were watching the night sky and had a much brighter vision than we are today,” Ortiz said at the University of North Texas.

Aristotle noticed that the Earth, cast on the moon during a lunar eclipse, was always curved, and an observation that proved that the Earth was round.

And the ancient Mesopotamian civilization saw the bloody red moon as a bad harbinger for the king. People set up alternative kings on the throne around the time of the solar eclipse, protecting the rulers from bad will.

“If there’s a plot for the film,” Ortiz said, “That’s it.”

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