Lunar eclipse to be visible from Calgary overnight
Posted Nov 18, 2021 7:16 am.
Last Updated Nov 18, 2021 8:43 am.
Blink and you’ll miss it, but there will be a partial lunar eclipse visible from Calgary overnight Thursday night to early Friday morning.
The eclipse is predicted to start just after midnight, peak around 2 a.m., and then complete just before 4 a.m according to timeanddate.com.
Although the eclipse will only be partial, the Earth’s shadow will cover most of the moon, making for a very pretty sight.
Dr. Ilana MacDonald, astronomer and teaching support administrator at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, says this will be the longest eclipse to happen in almost 600 years.
The last longest eclipse was in 1440, when Henry the VI was still the King of England. The whole celestial event is expected to last about six hours.
She says a lunar eclipse is always special because it’s a situation where the earth’s shadow covers a full moon, and that’s not something you get to see every day.
“It’s pretty exciting,” she says. “The reason for that is because it’s almost a total eclipse, which means that 97 per cent of the moon will actually be covered by the earth’s shadow. The moon is also an apogee, which is when it’s at the farthest point from the earth in its orbit around it.”
She adds that it’s the opposite of a supermoon where the moon is farther away.
“It looks a little bit smaller and for that reason, it’s going to be spending more time in the earth’s shadow.”
The colour of the moon and shade of red will depend on the weather and other conditions that are happening on earth.
“What’s happening when you see that red glow on the moon’s surface during an eclipse is you’re actually seeing sunlight that’s being scattered through the earth’s atmosphere and then landing on the moon’s surface,” MacDonald says.
“That’s because the earth’s atmosphere scatters away new light, which is why we see the sky is blue and allows red light to sort of scatter away. It could be anything from like a deep sort of brownish red to like an orange-red.”
She says it’s worth watch watching because a partial lunar eclipse isn’t something that happens every day.
The next total lunar eclipse will be in May of 2022.
