EUROPE: There will be blood in the sky just before dawn in the early morning on Saturday (April 4). Early risers will be treated to the spectacular sight of a “blood moon” hanging low in the west. Blood moon is not an astronomical or scientific term but it is becoming the popular description of a totally eclipsed moon. At 5 a.m., Earth will be directly between the sun and the moon, cutting off sunlight to the full moon.
Why does the moon turn red during an eclipse? Now here is a scientific term for you — Rayleigh scattering, the same phenomenon that causes the red color in sunsets. If you were standing on the moon looking at Earth during an eclipse, our planet would have a ring of red wrapped around it, the sunset and sunrise colors all around the world on view. Those red sunrises and sunsets shine all the way to the moon, giving it its reddish hue.
Saturday’s total lunar eclipse will be the third in a series of four, six months apart, a sequence known as a tetrad. The next and last one of the series will be at the end of September.
Sometimes astronomical events occur at convenient times for viewing and sometimes they do not. If you are not an early riser by nature, then watching this particular eclipse may not be all that convenient. The show starts at 3:17 a.m. when the moon first enters the dark part of Earth’s shadow known as the umbra. For the next hour and a half the moon will slowly darken as it slides deeper into the shadow. Total eclipse occurs just before 5 a.m., and that is when it will look its bloodiest.
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