Blood moon casts crimson glow
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Blood moon sounds like the title to a vampire movie rather than the beautiful and rare celestial event that it is.
Sunday evening’s super lunar eclipse presented the first such event since 1984 and another won’t take place again until 2033.
A lunar eclipse occurs as the earth passes between the sun and the moon while the moon orbits through the earth’s shadow. The moon is obscured or eclipsed and we are treated to a show in the sky. According to space.com, “Earth’s shadow is red at the edges for the same reason a sunset is red: When sunlight is scattered by passing through Earth’s atmosphere, the other colors of the spectrum are removed.” The moon being 13 percent closer to the earth provided the “super moon” portion of Sunday night’s eclipse.
While the eclipse provides an occasion of wonder and awe for some, it is a harbinger of end times for others. Asteroid collisions with earth, the beginning of the apocalypse and historically significant happenings like wars or peace signings have been predicted. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration explains that an average of one and a half lunar eclipses take place each year and in a 5,000 year period 7,719 eclipses took place providing a constant and natural cycle. And contrary to old world lunar myths, “lunacy” is no more likely to occur during a full moon or an eclipse than during any other time. Possibly more believable is the popular idea of a “romantic” full moon that stays in the sky all night long.
