A blood moon is set to begin tonight as Earth orbits directly between the sun and the moon.
The orange-red moon phenomenon, scientifically called a total lunar eclipse, is set to peak around 2 a.m. Friday as seen from Brandon. Shadows will begin to form on the moon beginning at 11 p.m. this evening and continue until 5 a.m.
Brandon University physics and astronomy professor Tyler Foster told the Sun that the eclipse is best observed with binoculars or the naked eye. He added, “You don’t even need a dark location, so there’s no need to drive outside of Brandon.”
Explaining the redness of the moon, Foster said the science is the same as sunsets painting our sky red.
Simply put, light tinges red after it travels long distances through Earth’s atmosphere, Foster said. The light that will shine on the moon tonight will be rays that travelled all the way through the atmosphere to the surface of the moon, and so it will show red.
The science behind this is that wavelengths of the colour red persist through “solvents” they encounter in Earth’s atmosphere, Foster said. And so after the light travels through the atmosphere and comes out the other side, many other colours have been weakened.
“All the blue light is being attenuated by the dust and solvents and pollutants and that, and red light gets through, and that gets cast onto the moon,” said Foster. “(So the redness on the moon is) light that’s kind of leaking around the Earth, through the thin layer of air that is on top of the Earth, our atmosphere.”
Meanwhile, shorter wavelengths such as those for the colour blue “scatter” in the atmosphere when coming into contact with particles that surround Earth like water vapour, volcanic dust and pollution. Foster said this is responsible for the blue sky that Earth typically displays.
The professor noted that red sunsets come from the same science. When the sun is low on the horizon, we observe the light through a long pathway of atmosphere, causing the light to shift toward red.
