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By Klaus Zintz
photo: dpa
For 104 minutes on Friday, the moon is completely in the shadow of the earth – and then appears reddish. We reveal where the red color comes from and when it is better to see the blood moon on Stuttgart.
Stuttgart – It's a fascinating sight when a large full moon disc is immersed in a coppery red light in total darkness: Blood Moon rightly calls this event. On Friday nights you can admire it – longer than any other lunar eclipse of this century.
In Stuttgart, according to the observatory, the said total starts at 21:30 and ends at 23:14, or 104 minutes. It will not be until June 9, 2123, that there will be a lunar eclipse of two minutes longer. And the next complete course of a darkening of the Erdtrabanten can be observed in Central Europe until the New Year 2028.
Mars arrives as close to Earth as rarely
The spectacle of Cosmic sky in the night from Friday to Saturday is complemented by another astronomical event: the reddish Mars faces the Earth and is as close to our planet as ever, so it's why it's also very bright and relatively large. This special constellation comes on average only every 15 years, most recently in 2003, astronomers point out. On July 27, Mars has a minimum distance of about 58 million kilometers from the Earth.
The observatory opened its doors in Stuttgart
"Our moon is already obscured, so the beginning of darkness is unfortunately not to be observed here", describes the observatory of the situation in Stuttgart – and explains: "The size the lunar eclipse is 1,613 times the apparent lunar diameter.So, our moon appears very dark during the whole.This is almost the maximum possible size of an eclipse lunar. "The whole event runs until Saturday morning: At 0.19 o'clock the moon leaves the core shadow of the earth, and at 1.30 clock is also about the time when the shadow partial of the earth on the moon goes down. For interested observers, the observatory opens at 20:30.
With the binoculars, the view is very impressive
In a lunar eclipse, the earth stands on a straight line between the sun and the moon. Thus, the full moon plunges into the shadows that the sunlit earth projects into space. If their so-called central shadows completely cover the moon, the darkness is total – the moon of the Earth should then be quite dark. But is not it? Because the atmosphere of the Earth directs some of the sunlight into the cone of the shadow, the moon still receives light and remains visible.
The moon of blood receives its reddish color because above all the long-wave red parts are broken by the earth's atmosphere. However, the moon is particularly dark this time because it pbades the Earth's shadow largely to the center. The color and lunar craters seem even more impressive in binoculars right now than at the naked eye. Even Mars, which is located in the south, now appears particularly red because, in addition to its natural color, it blushes like the moon and the sun as it rises through the earth's atmosphere.
The shadow border moves on the moon
When the moon gradually leaves the nucleus shadow at 23.14, it is very nice to see how the shadow border gets moves across the surface of the moon. However, sunlight falls from above on the Earth's satellite, so the mountains and crater rims do not throw such long craters as in a quarter-moon. In this, the rays that illuminate the Earth's satellite during its usual orbital cycle during the last quarter, particularly flat and provide a particularly impressive shadow.
Incidentally, the chances of actually seeing the Bloodmoon are good. For Friday, the German weather service is predicting sunny or sunny and usually dry weather with maximum values of up to 38 degrees. As he is also looking forward to Saturday night: Then it should be slightly cloudy or clear and mostly dry – at 21 to 14 degrees. The night from Friday to Saturday offers the opportunity to discover Venus, Jupiter and Saturn in addition to the Blood Moon and the striking Red March.
An unobstructed view to the southeast is useful
March appears about an hour later than the moon but it's not as big as this one. In the center of the lunar eclipse at 22:22, the two celestial bodies are still quite deep on the horizon, but rise higher and higher in the sky. If you want to see as long as possible an eclipse of blood, you must choose an observation site that allows an unobstructed view to the southeast. In the second half of the dark, it is then also very dark, so that the moon and the planet Mars radiate a beautiful red.
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