Holy cow, Batman! Blood moon rising
By Phillip Brents
The Boston Red Sox won the
World Series Oct. 27 by completing a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals.
While fans across the country were seeing red (the colors of both teams) on
their television sets, the two teams were playing under a blood red moon.Well, more like crimson or maybe even an ashen salmon colored moon, to be more precise.
The lifting of the Bambino’s curse surely had something to do with Wednesday night's total lunar eclipse that was visible to all parts of the populated Earth except Australia.
Totality occurred with the Red Sox leading 3-0.
With storm clouds still churning in the heavens above Southern California, the moon silently glided between passing clouds to make a perfect backdrop for a Halloween movie. A witch on a broomstick was the only thing missing. Anybody see any bats?
Scarcely a hundred years ago, such an event would have provoked a sense of foreboding among a population that was still largely rural and clinging to folkloric beliefs.
Throughout history this rusting of the moon has intrigued scientists as well as captivated soothsayers. On the farside, doomsayers and cultists have revered the blood moon as an evil omen. This ominous premonition loomed overhead crying out to be interpreted into man’s most sadistic dreams.
The history of the lunar eclipse has made its mark across the history books. Christopher Columbus, stranded in the Caribbean in 1503, used the prediction of a total lunar eclipse to gain favor — and much needed supplies — from natives.
The geometry on a lunar
eclipse is simple. Like any other three-dimensional object in space, the round
Earth — as illuminated by the sun — casts a shadow behind itself. All we have to
do to “see” this shadow is to step outside at night. The shadow starts from the
ground up and extends into space. It is called darkness.The Earth’s shadow extends about 1 million miles into space. The moon orbits about 238,000 miles on average from the Earth. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the moon moves along its orbit through the darkest part of the Earth’s long shadow. This can happen every six months or so and then not for periods of several years.
Those who managed to glimpse Wednesday’s total lunar eclipse through the clouds can count themselves as fortunate, as the next lunar eclipse will not happen until March 2007.
What makes the moon appear red and not black as it is passing through a shadow? The answer is refraction in the Earth’s atmosphere. If we were to look at our planet from afar, the Earth would not appear as a simple dark silhouette but one ringed by red light — the result of all sunrises and sunsets simultaneously refracted through the atmosphere.
This refracted light falls onto the moon’s shadowed surface, thus giving the total eclipsed moon its trademark ruddy color. A dusty atmosphere can make this color almost blood red. An exceptionally cloudy atmosphere will tend to extinguish sunsets, thus making the moon’s color more ashen than red.
The sight of a full but ruddy moon set against a starry sky both delights and enthralls.
The rain abated just in time as the moon rose at 5:54 p.m. The partial eclipse began at 6:14 p.m. as the Earth’s shadow slowly crept over the face of the moon, covering it completely for an hour and 22 minutes, from 7:23 to 8:45 p.m. As the moon moved through the Earth’s shadow, the moon returned to partial eclipse. The partial eclipse ended at 9:54 p.m. The duration from beginning of the partial eclipse to end was three hours and 40 minutes — one of the longer eclipses on record.
A blood red moon signaling in Halloween! Surely, what must be in store for Tuesday’s elections?!
Christopher Allen Sampson contributed to this column.
