Skygazers across the Western Hemisphere will be treated to celestial eye candy on Sunday night into early Monday morning as the full moon turns coppery red during a total lunar eclipse. It will be the only total lunar eclipse of the year, and that in itself should be reason enough to stay up late and marvel as the moon gets swallowed by Earth’s shadow.
You might have heard that this eclipse is also being called a “Super Blood Wolf Moon.” But as astronomers know, no number of edgy modifiers could make this display of cosmic clockwork any cooler.
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Unlike a total solar eclipse, when the moon moseys between the sun and the Earth, it’s our planet that slides between the sun and the moon during a total lunar eclipse. As the Earth blocks the sun, only slivers of light make it through the planet’s atmosphere and to the moon.
“If you were standing on the surface of the moon when this event was happening, and you were staring back at the Earth, what you would see is this beautiful reddish-orangish tinted ring,” said Jackie Faherty, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History.
That ring of light is made up of every sunrise and sunset happening on Earth at that moment in time. It’s the same light that makes the moon look red to those of us on Earth during the eclipse.
Who can see the lunar eclipse?
This eclipse will be visible in the night sky across North and South America. Skywatchers in parts of Europe and Africa will see part of or the entire eclipse in their predawn skies.
People living in Asia and Australia will not see this eclipse, unfortunately.
When can I see the eclipse?
The opening act starts Sunday night at 9:36 p.m. Eastern Time as the moon first enters Earth’s outer shadow, also called the penumbra. Darkness will creep up the lower left portion of the moon, almost imperceptibly.
At about 10:34 p.m., the moon will start to enter Earth’s inner shadow, or the umbra. This marks the beginning of the partial lunar eclipse, when it will appear as if something took a bite out of the moon.
At 11:41 p.m., the moon will enter totality and turn completely red as it is devoured by Earth’s umbral shadow. It will stay this way for about one hour, and at 12:12 a.m. on Monday, it will reach the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, appearing to be at its most coppery red.
“The moon becomes 10,000 times dimmer than what it was,” said Brian Murphy, director of the Holcomb Observatory and Planetarium at Butler University in Indianapolis. “Because it is so dim at that point, you’ll be able to see stars right around the moon.” That’s interesting, he said, because full moons tend to be so bright that they outshine stars in their celestial neighborhood.
As it begins to exit the umbral shadow at 12:44 a.m., the moon will start to brighten. By 2:48 a.m., the moon will return to its usual brightness, and the eclipse will be completely over.
People on the West Coast have a better time slot to watch the show because totality will occur between 8:41 p.m. and 9:44 p.m. Pacific Time.
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Where should I go to watch and what will I need?
That’s the best thing about this celestial show: As long as you’re located on the half of the planet that will experience the eclipse, you can watch it from nearly anywhere, weather permitting.
Dark skies are always a plus, but your backyard or city street will work just fine. No need for fancy equipment, as your two eyes are all you need.
But if you want to enhance your experience, binoculars will let you better see the whole picture as the moon’s surface changes color.
What if it’s too cold to go outside or too cloudy to see?
You can watch the lunar eclipse online. The Slooh Community Observatory, a telescope broadcast service, will live-stream the event from the Canary Islands and Chile starting around 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday. Timeanddate.com will also host a broadcast.
Why is it being called a ‘Super Blood Wolf Moon’?
This lunar eclipse has been given a name that sounds like it belongs to a heavy metal band. But it’s really all glitter, not gold. So let’s break it down:
Super
The term “supermoon” has come to loosely mean a full moon near perigee, or the point when it is closest to Earth in its elliptical orbit. Normally when this happens, most people can’t tell, as the moon appears only slightly bigger than it does any other night.
But when compared with the moon at apogee, when it is farthest away from the Earth, the differences come into focus. For example, on Monday during perigee, the moon will be approximately 222,040 miles away from our planet, in contrast to Jan. 9, when it was at apogee and about 252,350 miles away. A “supermoon” is about 14 percent larger than one at apogee and 30 percent brighter.
But this term was actually first coined in 1979 by an astrologist named Richard Nolle, not by an astronomer.
Blood
This is an embellishment of the coppery-red tint that the moon takes on during any lunar eclipse. Sometimes it’s more brown.
Wolf
Nothing to do with werewolves.
The “wolf” title has been attributed to the Native Americans’ name for January’s full moon. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the term comes from the “Algonquin tribes who lived in regions from New England to Lake Superior.” But this sourcing is suspect.
“The ‘wolf’ part, it’s almost like this stereotypical, romanticized version of the native culture,” said Annette Lee, a mixed-race Dakota-Sioux astronomer at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.
The term, she said, is an oversimplification that sort of groups hundreds of distinct Native American tribes together into one blob. For example, the Ojibwe tribe — which historically lived around Lake Superior and is a part of the Algonquin-language family — called both the month of January and its full moon the “Great Spirit Moon,” she said. In their language, it is “Gichi-manidoo-giizis,” according to Ojibwe.net.
“I think the problem with ‘The Wolf Moon’ is that it takes something that is really important and really meaningful out of its cultural context,” she said. As a result, “it doesn’t have the substance that it needs for people to really learn about the culture in a dignified way.”
What else is happening in the sky this year?
There are two more “supermoons” on Feb. 19 and March 21 this year, though neither will be a “blood moon.”
There will also be two solar eclipses — a total solar eclipse visible in parts of South America in July and a year-ending annular, or “ring of fire,” eclipse on Dec. 26, which will be visible over the Arabian Peninsula and India.
Nov. 11 also marks a Mercury transit, which is when people at points on the East Coast can watch the solar system’s innermost planet make a six-hour long trek across the sun.
Nicholas St. Fleur is a science reporter who writes about archaeology, paleontology, space and other topics. He joined The Times in 2015. Before that, he was an assistant editor at The Atlantic. @scifleur • Facebook
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