The first lunar eclipse of the season will take place on Sunday night into Monday morning.
All of South America and most of North America will see the eclipse in its entirety, while Alaska and western Canada will see totality at moonrise and western Europe will see the reverse at dawn.
When the Moon intersects the ecliptic, it causes the Sun and the Earth to align with each other. We would see solar and lunar eclipses every month if the Moon was tilted five degrees relative to the ecliptic.
Eclipse season occurs when the Sun-Earth line is near the nodes.
April 30 partial solar eclipse and this coming weekend's lunar eclipse were included in the first season of 2022.
The Moon has an average distance from the Earth of 1.5 degrees. During an eclipse, you can see the curve of the Earth's shadow crossing the Moon without special gear.
Shadows have a penumbral outer edge which is partially visible. You can see a partial solar eclipse from the Earthward surface of the Moon.
NASA's Surveyor 3 was able to grab an image of a solar eclipse from the Moon in 1967.
Images of a solar eclipse captured from the Moon (it was a total lunar eclipse on Earth) with the television camera aboard NASA's Surveyor III lander on April 24, 1967. pic.twitter.com/nPryJl6Xnm
— Jason Major (@JPMajor) January 17, 2022
As the Artemis missions return crew to the lunar surface, human eyes could repeat this feat.
The Moon will be immersed in the penumbra around 10:00 PM Eastern Time (EDT) on Sunday, so don't expect to see much change in the color of the Moon.
The Moon will be a light tea-colored hue. The eastern limb of the Moon will have a shading as it nears the umbra and the partial stages begin.
It will take 1 hours, 24 minutes, and 53 seconds for totality to be complete.
No doubt people will try to bill it as a Super Blood Moon Eclipse. The eclipse occurs about a day and a half before the lunar perigee on May 17 at 15:24 UT.
A lunar eclipse requires no special equipment, though a small telescope or binoculars can enhance the view. You can take a picture of a lunar eclipse if you use a focal length of at least 200mm.
To shoot in manual mode, be prepared to dial down from a fast 1/100th of a second during the partial phases to a slow 1 - 4 second exposure during totality.
Areas seeing totality underway at moonrise and moonset give photographers the chance to take pictures of totality along with foreground objects. If you want a building or statue to appear in front of the Moon, you will need to be up to a kilometer away from your chosen target.
Some total lunar eclipses are better than others.
The Blood Moon can vary in color from a bright saffron yellow disk with a blue-tinged limb to a dark brick red. During the December 1992 lunar eclipse, the Moon almost disappeared from view, as it was in totality.
The color and intensity of the Moon is described by the Danjon Scale, which runs from bright to dark.
The value is dependent on two factors. The moon passes through the umbra. On April 4, 2015, the Moon appeared bright on one limb, sparking a lively debate about the size of the Earth's shadow at the Moon.
The amount of dust and aerosols currently suspended in the Earth's atmosphere is the second factor.
In the past year eruptions in Tonga and forest fires and dust storms around the world may add to this environmental atmospheric load, resulting in a fairly dark total lunar eclipse.
A set of eclipses will be nearly similar in circumstances just over 18 years apart. It works because the lunations are very close to 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours, with each successive eclipse in the same saros series shifting about 120 degrees.
The Babylonians used the saros cycle to predict eclipses. The Greeks built their knowledge of the saros cycle of eclipses into the famous Antikythera mechanism.
Saroses begin as shallow penumbrals, then become central total eclipses. The lunar saros series 131 has 72 eclipses, of which 34 are this weekend.
The last total lunar eclipse in this series will take place on 3 September 2022.
There are some fun projects to do during a lunar eclipse. One is a long-standing effort to time when specific lunar craters enter the umbra in an effort to refine the diameter of the Earth's shadow.
Captain James Cook and Columbus may have used this method to measure their longitude during an eclipse.
It works because the eclipse gives you a good one-time hack, allowing the observer to gauge the position of the Moon in the sky, versus a known prediction from a table made for a land-based observatory.
It is worth keeping an eye out for images and video of meteors hitting the Moon. It was during the eclipse in January that we were sent scrambling to see if we also caught the flash on the lunar limb.
There is a chance that 2006 GY2 may be active this weekend, so it is a good idea to watch for any spurious meteor activity.
Be sure to watch for things passing in front of the Moon. Chris Becke notes that we do have a transit of the Chinese space station around the start of the eclipse in the US.
If you want to see the ISS transit the eclipsed moon this Sunday night, you're out of luck due to an unfavorable orbit. But if you live along this line, you may see the Chinese Space Station transit near the beginning of totality. check https://t.co/SSpjvNJprT@Astroguyz pic.twitter.com/YAp1a3uXJ2
— Christopher Becke (@BeckePhysics) May 9, 2022
It is possible to see a total lunar eclipse and a totally eclipsed Moon at the same time. The umbra of the Earth is larger than the Moon and the Earth's atmosphere makes light from both look different.
You will need high ground and a clear horizon to carry out this unique feat. The best places to view the eclipse are between the U2 and U3 contact zones. The United Kingdom, France, and central Africa are all covered by these swaths at dawn.
We are keeping a close eye on the weather this weekend. You don't need a crystal-clear sky to enjoy a lunar eclipse, just a good clear view of the Moon.
The CONUS has a cloud cover percentage for Sunday night.
Are you Clouded out or simply living in the wrong hemisphere? The Virtual Telescope Project will host a live stream of the total lunar eclipse on May 15 at 1:45 UT.
There will be a total lunar eclipse in 2022.
The article was published by Universe Today. The original article is worth a read.
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