News Highlight
A Total Lunar Eclipse (TLE) occurred on 8th November 2022.
Key Takeaways
- The total lunar eclipse will be the last of 2022 and will only occur again after three years.
- Earlier Indians witnessed a Partial Solar Eclipse in October 2022.
Lunar Eclipse
- A lunar eclipse is caused by Earth blocking sunlight from reaching the moon and creating a shadow across the lunar surface.
- The sun-blocking Earth casts two shadows that fall on the moon during a lunar eclipse:
- The umbra is a full, dark shadow, and
- the penumbra is a partial outer shadow.
- There are three types of lunar eclipses depending on how the sun, Earth and moon are aligned at the time of the event.
- Total lunar eclipse
- Partial lunar eclipse
- Penumbral lunar eclipse
Total lunar eclipse
- In a total lunar eclipse, the entire Moon falls within the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, called the umbra.
- When the Moon is within the umbra, it will turn a reddish hue.
- Lunar eclipses are sometimes called “Blood Moons” because of this phenomenon.
Partial lunar eclipse
- A partial lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth moves between the Sun and Moon but the three celestial bodies do not form a straight line in space.
- When that happens, a small part of the Moon’s surface is covered by the darkest, central part of the Earth’s shadow, called the umbra.
- The rest of the Moon is covered by the outer part of the Earth’s shadow called the penumbra.
Penumbral lunar eclipse
- A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and the Moon are imperfectly aligned.
- When this happens, the Earth blocks some of the Sun’s light from directly reaching the Moon’s surface and covers all or part of the Moon with the outer part of its shadow, also known as the penumbra.
- Since the penumbra is much fainter than the dark core of the Earth’s shadow, the umbra, a penumbral eclipse of the Moon is often difficult to tell apart from a normal Full Moon.
What makes the November 8 lunar eclipse unique?
- The lunar eclipse on November 8 is a blood moon — meaning the moon will have a reddish hue. This happens when the moon is within the umbra.
- Why does the Moon turn red?
- A total lunar eclipse happens when the Moon travels through the Earth’s umbra and blocks all direct sunlight from illuminating the Moon’s surface.
- However, some sunlight still reaches the lunar surface indirectly, via the Earth’s atmosphere, bathing the Moon in a reddish, yellow, or orange glow.
- As the Sun’s rays pass through the atmosphere, some colours in the light spectrum—those towards the violet spectrum—are filtered out by a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering.
- This is the same mechanism that causes colourful sunrises and sunsets.
- Red wavelengths are least affected by this effect, so the light reaching the Moon’s surface has a reddish hue, causing the fully eclipsed Moon to take on a red colour.
Pic Courtesy: Business Standard
Content Source: The Hindu