Did you see last night’s Blood Moon? I stood on my front lawn in my Spongebob pajamas for twenty minutes waiting for the blood. Never saw it. Certainly nothing as cool as this. Check out the superfab GIF via reddit.
From ABC News: “The phenomenon is known as a tetrad, in which the moon is completely covered by the earth’s umbral shadow for four eclipses in a row, as opposed to only partial eclipses that fall in the outer penumbra. But rather than succumbing to complete darkness, the moon will glow red as it receives the refracted light that spills over the Earth’s circumference. The series is a rare occurrence in history, with large spans of time, such as the 300 years between 1600 and 1900, witnessing none. But the 21st century will be more promising, according to Fred Espenak, who works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and specializes in eclipse predictions. Frequency sort of goes through 585-year cycles,” the astrophysicist explains. “So you go through centuries where you don’t have any, and centuries where you have a number of them.
The next tetrad will begin in 2032.”
From CNN: “If rain or clouds obscured your lunar experience, don’t fret. This episode is the first of four consecutive total lunar eclipses — known as the tetrad — that will occur in six-month intervals until September 2015. And unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are safe to view with the naked eye and don’t require special filters.”
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