Get ready for a "Blood Moon" eclipse in Western Pennsylvania this month
John Fogerty once sang, "There's a bad moon on the rise."
Maybe he was referring to what's coming our way next week, in the wee hours of the morning on Friday, March 14th.
While people may remember the big solar eclipse from April of last year, Dr. Daniel Vanden Berk from Saint Vincent College says, there is a difference between a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse, and it is kind of night and day.
"The moon casts a shadow on the earth during the solar eclipse, but during the lunar eclipse, it is the moon that goes into the earth's shadow," said Dr. Vanden Berk.
And while you can see a lunar eclipse every few years on Earth, it's rarer to be in full totality of one. That's why the lunar eclipse that's coming up will be so interesting. Everyone in North America will get to experience this full totality and what is known as a "blood moon."
"The entirety of the moon is fully in the earth's shadow, and we get that very deep dark brown/reddish color of the moon," Dr. Vanden Berk said. "And that happens because of the sun's light. Even though the sun's light is blocked out, some of the light passes through the earth's atmosphere and gets scattered, and the light that reaches the moon is very red in color."
Unlike the solar eclipse, Dr. Vanden Berk says you don't need special glasses for viewing and looking at the moon with your naked eye won't hurt you. And he says that use of a telescope or binoculars can only enhance your viewing of this totality that will last just over an hour.
And while you can view this eclipse from anywhere, Dr. Vanden Berk says that Saint Vincent College will be welcoming people onto campus to watch with students and faculty a like, and to have a great shared scientific experience.
"We don't know a lot about the origin of the moon, its history, its geology," said Dr. Vanden Berk. "So, we don't necessarily learn a lot about those things during lunar eclipses, but one thing it shows us is that the sky is a very spectacular place, and this is one of the things that makes studying astronomy so enjoyable."
Now again, full totality for this blood moon will be starting around 2:25 a.m. on Friday, March 14th, so if you want to see it, you are either going to have to stay up late or get up very early.
