Lunar Eclipse

StarDate

The 41st episode of a celestial series plays out tomorrow: a total lunar eclipse. It’ll be visible around much of the world – but not the Americas.

Every eclipse belongs to a series, called a Saros. The eclipses in a Saros are separated by 18 years plus 11 and a third days. If we could watch all the eclipses in the cycle play out, we’d see the Moon pass through Earth’s shadow from top to bottom or bottom to top. So the Moon barely dips its toe in the shadow at the beginning and end of the sequence. But it’s fully immersed during the middle of the cycle, creating total eclipses. And because of that extra third of a day in the cycle, each eclipse occurs a third of the way around the world from the previous one.

This eclipse is part of Saros 128. The cycle began in 1304 and will end in 2566 – 71 eclipses in all.

Most of Asia and Australia will see this entire eclipse, from beginning to end. And most of the rest of the world will see at least part of it. Totality – when the Moon is completely immersed in the shadow – will last for an hour and 22 minutes. But the eclipse occurs during the middle of the day for those of us in the United States, so we won’t see any of it.

What we will see the next couple of nights, though, is a beautiful full Moon – the Fruit Moon or Green Corn Moon – completely free of Earth’s dark shadow.

Script by Damond Benningfield