Anyone who wakes up before 6 a.m. EST on the morning of March 3 and looks up at the sky will see a blood moon – the result of a total lunar eclipse.
Bennett Maruca, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware, can get into the science behind a red moon: why a total eclipse occurs; why the Moon turns red; and when and where the eclipse will achieve “totality” and be best viewed.
While lunar eclipses aren’t particularly rare – the next one arrives in August – stargazers will have to wait until the end of 2028 for the next total lunar eclipse.
That’s what makes this one worth a look, Maruca said.
“One of my favorite things about total lunar eclipses is that it’s hard to know ahead of time what it will look like. The Moon can take on a color ranging from burnt orange to red to grayish brown,” he said. “And there’s a certain cultural connection here. For our ancestors these were monumental events. They carved what they saw into stone, so it took a lot of effort to write it down. They must have been dazzled by what they saw.”
Maruca recommends that people start watching at 4:50 a.m., when the Moon will begin passing into the central part of Earth’s shadow. “You can actually see the shadow slowly grow from one side of the Moon and gradually spread across its surface.”