On Saturday, Nov. 8th, the full moon will glide through our planet's shadow and turn a delightful shade of sunset-red.
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Step outside on a sunny day, look down and examine your shadow. It's dark in the middle, pale and fuzzy around the edges, and it always points away from the sun.
Although we seldom see it, Earth has a shadow, too, much like your own: dark inside, pale outside, pointing away from the sun. Way away. Earth's shadow stretches almost a million miles into space, far enough to reach the moon.
On Saturday, Nov. 8th, the full moon will glide through our planet's shadow. Observers on every continent except Australia can see the event, which astronomers call a lunar eclipse.
Sky watchers will first notice a shadowy darkness creeping over the moon's northeastern limb at 23:32 Universal Time (UT) on Nov. 8th. Watching Earth's shadow sweep across the moon's terrain is fun. Even better is totality, when the entire moon is covered in shadow. Totality begins at 01:06 UT on Nov. 9th and lasts for 25 minutes. (Note: the table below converts UT to US standard time zones.)
The totally eclipsed moon won't be totally dark--and that's what makes totality delightful. Earth's atmosphere bends sunlight into our planet's shadow and onto the moon. This sunlight is reddened as it travels a great distance through our dusty atmosphere, and so the moon looks red. Sunsets on Earth look red for the same reason.
