{"id":18174,"date":"2019-01-19T00:58:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T16:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/all-american-lunar-eclipse-will-darken-the-moon-and-brighten-spirits-if-skies-clear\/"},"modified":"2019-01-19T00:58:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T16:58:00","slug":"all-american-lunar-eclipse-will-darken-the-moon-and-brighten-spirits-if-skies-clear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/all-american-lunar-eclipse-will-darken-the-moon-and-brighten-spirits-if-skies-clear\/","title":{"rendered":"All-American lunar eclipse will darken the moon and brighten spirits (if skies clear)"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_474879\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-474879\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-474879\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/190117-lunar-630x420.jpg\" alt=\"Lunar eclipse\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/190117-lunar-630x420.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/190117-lunar-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/190117-lunar.jpg 1169w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-474879\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ruddy lunar eclipse hangs over Mount Rainier in 2015. (GeekWire Photo \/ Kevin Lisota)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Are you ready for Sunday night\u2019s \u201cSuper Blood Wolf Moon\u201d? The good news is that North America is well-positioned to see a total lunar eclipse for the first time in nearly a year.<\/p>\n<p>The bad news? If the skies are clouded over, it doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a particularly important caveat in Western Washington \u2014 where the weather outlook calls for considerable cloudiness and a 20 percent chance of rain.<\/p>\n<p>Total lunar eclipses tend to be more widely seen than total solar eclipses, because when Earth comes between the sun and the full moon, our planet\u2019s shadow is more than capable of darkening the moon\u2019s entire disk. The sight is visible from any place where the skies are dark and clear, during a totally predictable period of time.<\/p>\n<p>Because the moon\u2019s orbit around Earth is slightly tilted with respect to Earth\u2019s orbit around the sun, an eclipse doesn\u2019t occur every time it passes behind our planet. The sun-Earth-moon alignment has to be just right to produce a total lunar eclipse from Earth\u2019s point of view. That may happen once a year (as is the case in 2019), twice a year (as in 2018), or not at all in the course of a year (as in 2020).<\/p>\n<p>NASA serves up a year-by-year list of total, partial and penumbral lunar eclipses.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"NASA | Understanding Lunar Eclipses\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lNi5UFpales?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Here are the key times for Sunday\u2019s celestial event:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>6:36 p.m. PT:<\/strong> Earth\u2019s penumbral shadow begins to touch the edge of the moon\u2019s disk, but the effect isn\u2019t likely to be perceptible until about 7:10 p.m.<\/li>\n<li><strong>7:33 p.m. PT:<\/strong> Earth\u2019s dark umbral shadow begins marching across the moon.<\/li>\n<li><strong>8:41 p.m. PT:<\/strong> Totality begins when Earth\u2019s shadow covers the moon completely. Direct sunlight is blocked, but the refracted light of a million sunsets is bent by Earth\u2019s atmosphere, casting a reddish, brownish or even grayish glow on the darkened disk. This is why some folks call a total lunar eclipse a \u201cblood moon.\u201d Others aren\u2019t crazy about the phrase. \u201cAnyone who says \u2018blood moon\u2019 must also know that the term has long gone out of fashion among the cool kids,\u201d German science writer Daniel Fischer says.<\/li>\n<li><strong>9:44 p.m. PT:<\/strong> Totality ends when Earth\u2019s umbral shadow begins its retreat.<\/li>\n<li><strong>10:51 p.m. PT:<\/strong> The moon emerges from Earth\u2019s dark shadow and is dimmed only slightly by the penumbral shadow.<\/li>\n<li><strong>11:48 p.m. PT:<\/strong> The moon reverts completely to its regular full phase. The last perceptible hints of the penumbral eclipse are likely to fade from sight about a half-hour earlier than this, at about 11:15 p.m.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because of the varying orbital positions of the moon in its orbit around Earth, this weekend\u2019s full moon is closer to us than average, which means the moon looks bigger and brighter than average. By some definitions, it\u2019s the first of three supermoons in 2019.&nbsp;I prefer to reserve that designation for the closest and brightest moon in a given year (which occurs in February this year). But that\u2019s just me. In any case, this is where the \u201cSuper\u201d in \u201cSuper Blood Wolf Moon\u201d comes from.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cWolf Moon\u201d comes from American folklore about the names given to each month\u2019s full moon. January supposedly brings the Wolf Moon because Native Americans and early European settlers associated the sight with hungry wolves howling outside their villages.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re hungry for the eerie sight of a total lunar eclipse, you have to keep the weather in mind. The National Weather Service\u2019s outlook for Sunday night calls for cloud cover over most of Western Washington, so if you\u2019re a Seattleite, your best bet may well be to watch the eclipse online.<\/p>\n<p>Just in case you\u2019re clouded out, here\u2019s a lineup of lunar eclipse webcasts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Griffith Observatory:<\/strong> Live! From Los Angeles! The observatory\u2019s eclipse coverage starts at 5 p.m. PT Sunday.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Slooh:<\/strong> The online observatory will air a pre-game show at 8:30 a.m. PT today, with eclipse coverage due to start at 6 p.m. PT Sunday.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Astronomy Live Stream:<\/strong> A 4K video view of the moon from Denver is due to go online at 6 p.m. PT Sunday.<\/li>\n<li><strong>TimeAndDate.com:<\/strong> Tune in the webcast starting at 7 p.m. PT&nbsp;Sunday with live commentary by astrophysicist Graham Jones.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Astronomers Without Borders:<\/strong> The webcast begins at 7:30 p.m. PT&nbsp;Sunday with hosts Andrew Fazekas (the \u201cNight Sky Guy\u201d) and Peter Anthony Holder.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exploratorium:<\/strong> The San Francisco museum is planning eclipse coverage on Facebook Live starting at 7:30 p.m. PT Sunday.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For what it\u2019s worth, the next total lunar eclipse after this one comes on May 26, 2021. In 2022, we\u2019ll get in on a double dose of lunar darkness. And if you can wait another two years after that, there\u2019s a North American total solar eclipse to look forward to in 2024.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_474867\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-474867\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-474867 size-full-width\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/190117-eclipsemap-630x354.jpg\" alt=\"Lunar eclipse map\" width=\"630\" height=\"354\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/190117-eclipsemap-630x354.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/190117-eclipsemap-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/190117-eclipsemap-1260x709.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/190117-eclipsemap.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-474867\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This map shows locations worldwide from which the Jan. 20 total lunar eclipse is visible, weather permitting. Because an eclipsed moon is always full, the moon sets (or rises) at almost the same time as the sun rises (or sets) on the opposite horizon. For viewers in North and South America, the entire eclipse will be visible. (Sky and Telescope Graphic \/ Fred Espenak)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em><strong>Update for 12:30 p.m. PT Jan. 20:<\/strong> We\u2019ve updated this report with the latest weather forecasts, but check in with the National Weather Service, the Weather Channel or your favorite source of weather information for further updates over the weekend.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A ruddy lunar eclipse hangs over Mount Rainier in 2015. (GeekWire Photo \/ Kevin Lisota) Are you ready for Sunday night\u2019s \u201cSuper Blood Wolf Moon\u201d? The good news is that North America is well-positioned to see a total lunar eclipse for the first time in nearly a year. The bad news? If the skies are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1409,4377,625,4378],"class_list":["post-18174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-eclipse","tag-lunar-eclipse","tag-moon","tag-skywatching"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}