The Super Flower Blood Moon eclipse of 2022 has begun!
The early penumbral stage of the Super Flower Blood Moon lunar eclipse is seen in Santiago, on May 15 2022. (Image credit: Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images)
This eclipse overnight tonight and early Monday (May 15 to 16) takes place during the so-called Flower Moon, the May full moon, named as it coincides with the spring blooming season in America. It's also a supermoon tonight, making this the Super Flower Blood Moon of May 2022.
On the U.S. East Coast, the spectacle began at 9:32 p.m. on Sunday (May 15; 0132 GMT on May 16), as the moon entered the penumbra, the lighter part of Earth's shadow, which occurs when Earth only partially obstructs the sun.
15–16 May 2022 Total Lunar Eclipse (Blood Moon)
The curvature of the shadow's path and the apparent rotation of the Moon's disk is due to the Earth's rotation
The total phase of this Blood Moon total lunar eclipse will be visible from across North and South America, plus parts of Europe and Africa.
Regions seeing, at least, some parts of the eclipse: South/West Europe, South/West Asia, Africa, Much of North America, South America, Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Antarctica.
Lunar eclipses can be visible from everywhere on the night side of the Earth, if the sky is clear. From some places the entire eclipse will be visible, while in other areas the Moon will rise or set during the eclipse.
A Total Lunar Eclipse in Prime-Time
The moon in eclipse on Sunday night from San Diego.Credit...Mike Blake/Reuters
Finally a good reason to stay up on Sunday night: A total lunar eclipse. Lunar watchers throughout the United States can experience some heavenly wonder as Earth’s shadow covers the moon during prime viewing hours the night of May 15. Those on the East Coast can watch our natural satellite start to turn an eerie copper-red color at around 11:30 p.m. Eastern time during one of the longest lunar eclipses in recent memory.
“For pretty much all of North America, this is a tremendous viewing opportunity,” said Madhulika Guhathakurta, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The eclipse will be visible for a large portion of the world, including those in the Americas, much of Europe and Africa, and parts of the Pacific. Joseph Rao, an associate astronomer at the Hayden Planetarium in New York, estimates that some 2.7 billion people should be able to catch at least part of the eclipse.
Lunar eclipse tonight: Do you need special glasses to see Blood Moon?
Don’t worry about digging them out for tonight’s Lunar Eclipse. There’s no special viewing equipment necessary to see May 15th’s celestial show.
“”A lunar eclipse is perfectly safe to watch,” Space.com notes. “All you’ll need are your eyes, but binoculars or a telescope will give you a much nicer view.”
May full moon guide 2022: 'Flower Moon' lunar eclipse
May's full moon, known as the Flower Moon, will undergo an eclipse on the night of May 15-16. (Image credit: Getty Images)
For New York City observers, the full moon will happen at 12:14 a.m. on May 16 (0414 UTC) according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. At that point the eclipse will be well underway; the eclipse starts on the evening of May 15 at 9:32 p.m. local time. By the time the moon is officially full, the eclipse will be near maximum (which occurs at 12:11 a.m.).
Full moons happen when the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun, so the timing of moon phases depends on one's time zone. Since the Earth is directly between the sun and moon, one might expect that the moon would enter the Earth's shadow every 28.5 days (this is the time it takes the moon to make a circuit of the Earth). That doesn't happen, because the moon's orbit is tilted slightly – about 5 degrees – to the plane of the Earth's orbit, so most of the time the moon "misses" the shadow of the Earth and we see a full moon.
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