By The Light of The Shadowy Moon

It’s total lunar eclipse time tomorrow night. (Thursday morning for Europe and eastern Africa.)

Gregg Dindermann of Sky & Telescope produced this map (left) for their web site’s informative article.

From my home, the full moon will be engulfed by the Earth’s shadow for almost an hour starting at 9PM.

Why won’t the moon be blacked out? Sunlight passing through Earth’s atmosphere is bent toward the moon’s surface. In a way, the moon will be bathed with the light of sunset. An observer on the moon would see a gray, brown, copper, or orange ring in the sky, the color depending on the atmospheric conditions along Dindermann’s map where the moon will rise or set during total eclipse.