From what I remember growing up, you always saw the lunar eclipse in the newspapers with a single photo with several images of the moon showing how the lunar eclipse looked. It really was a single frame on the film with several shots take of the moon at intervals of five or ten minutes. I do not remember it being orange mainly because the newspapers were in black and white. I also lived less than a hundred miles from Canada and therefore the orange color may not have bee a factor. It just seems funny that years later I can not remember a lunar eclipse described in this article.

From what I have read in the magazines and all, we will have a spectacular lunar eclipse the night of May 15th (our meeting night). This will be visible over all of North America and it will have already started by the time we get dark skies here in Las Vegas and will end around midnight.

The only time that an eclipse of the moon can occur is during a full moon when the earth is exactly between the sun and the moon. This usually takes place about twice a year. Why don’t we get it during every full moon? To answer this question, the moon is on an orbit that is tilted at 5 degrees. This tilt is enough that most of the time the moon misses the shadow of the earth and hence no eclipse.

The whole process of eclipsing the moon takes about one and a half hours and is only viewable on the nightside of the earth. During an eclipse of the moon, the moon never gets completely lost in the night sky. Fortunately our atmosphere bends the light from the sun and bathes the moon with a reddish orange glow at totality. The color and darkness of the moon can vary tremendously due to the amount of cloud, dust and pollution in our atmosphere at the time of eclipse.

During totality the moon’s actual brightness and color depend on the weather along the earth’s sunrise-sunset line. This is the line that divides day from night. Light refracted through this part of our atmosphere is the only light reaching the moon during totality. Sometimes the moon appears bright and grayish-brown and other times it will look like a deep coppery red sphere. There is no way to predict what it will look like at any given eclipse.

This eclipse places the moon in the constellation Libra. This is predicted to be a darker eclipse than most due to its southern location and we will be observing it through more atmosphere. The totality of this eclipse is predicted to last 53 minutes.

Until later - keep your eye on the sky!