For many astronomers, the sight of a blood moon is something truly awe inspiring. This is why millions of people will be turning their heads skywards this Sunday or Monday (depending upon their location) to watch the majestic super lunar eclipse.
So what exactly is a blood moon? It is a lunar eclipse in which the Earth isn’t completely refracting (or in laymen terms: bending) the light into the shadow region known as Umbra. The sunlight after passing through the atmosphere losses almost all of its bluer colors and as a result a reddish moon can be seen on the sky. This reddening is similar to the sunset or sunrise we see every day. To oversimplify, we can even state that the blood moon is a lunar eclipse in which we see the sunset or sunrise reflected back to use from the surface of the moon.
This is a perfectly normal and is understood completely by scientists worldwide. However, many of our local news media has picked up some hoopla caused by Christian Pastors who have gone crazy by saying that this signifies doom. Some renowned news media has even gone as far as to call these people “experts” or “Scientists”, but trust us there level of expertise is the same as our cricket team’s ability to qualify for the FIFA world cup final. So no, there won’t be a Godly being coming down to smite us or an asteroid drastically changing directions to hit us just after sniffing the blood moon.
This lunar eclipse will complete a tetrad, which is what we call a series of four full lunar eclipses to be sighted back to back. These are somewhat rare and the fact that this time around the moon will be appearing about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than when furthest from us, makes the whole event truly something that scientists world over to look forward to.
