Skies over Colorado cleared overnight, just before a lunar eclipse began turning the moon red, creating a beautiful display.
The eclipse began around 2:51 a.m. Denver time. The earth’s shadow took several hours to pass over the moon, ending around 6:30 a.m., just as the moon was setting.
The eclipse was visible in North and South America, and was especially clear in the West. People in the Pacific islands, eastern Asia, Australia and New Zealand were also able to view it..
An eclipse occurs when Earth passes between the sun and the moon, blocking the sun’s light. It’s rare because the moon is usually either above or below the plane of Earth’s orbit.
Since the Earth is bigger than the moon, the process of the Earth’s shadow taking a bigger and bigger “bite” out of the moon, totally eclipsing it before the shadow recedes, lasts about 3 1/2 hours, said Doug Duncan, director of the University of Colorado’s Fiske Planetarium. The total eclipse phase, in which the moon has an orange or reddish glow, lasts about 1 1/2 hours.
During the full eclipse, the moon won’t be completely dark because some light still reaches it around the edges of the Earth.
The light is refracted as it passes through our atmosphere, scattering blue light — which is why the sky is blue — but sending reddish light onto the moon.
“When someone asks why is it (the moon) red, you can say because the sky is blue,” Duncan said.
The next total lunar eclipse occurs Feb. 21, 2008, and will be visible from the Americas, Europe and Asia.
