Few people outside late on the evening of Wednesday, 3 March could have missed the lovely sight of a total Lunar Eclipse. Often referred to by the media as a “Blood” Moon, it is to me more of a “Copper” Moon as that is the lovely tint the Full Moon adopts as it slips through the Earth’s shadow.
The colour is due to the sunlight refracting or bending around the entire Earth with the blue light being selectively absorbed by dust in our atmosphere. So really, what we are seeing on the surface of the Moon is the reflected light of all those sunsets around the Earth.
Eclipses are the only time we can readily watch the Moon’s motion as it glides through the tiny spot in space that is the Earth’s shadow. That spot is always there but only rarely does the Moon pass right through it. It must be at Full Moon as that is the only time the Moon is exactly opposite the Sun but for most months, it moves just above or below this small spot in its relentless 28 day voyage around the Earth.
We will not have a chance to observe another eclipse in New Zealand until 2028 but that will be a special year. On 31 December, 2028 we will have another Lunar Eclipse while on 22 July we will have an even rarer Total Solar Eclipse, but you will have to travel to Dunedin or Australia to properly see that one.
