According to NASA Solar System Ambassador to Utah, Patrick Wiggins, observers will first notice a darkening on the edge of the moon a few minutes after midnight tonight when the moon enters the dark part of Earth’s shadow. For those who can stay up that late, Wiggins explains what you’ll see — as long as the skies are clear.
“It actually gets started a few minutes after midnight on Thursday night, which would then be Friday morning,” Wiggins said. “That's when the moon will first start to enter the dark part of the earth shadow, so it becomes very visible when something's going on. And then for the next almost four hours, it'll be very slowly moving its way to Earth's shadow until about 3:47 a.m. It'll pop out the other side. So, we've got three hours and 47 minutes or there about to hopefully see the moon to a hole in the clouds.”
Unfortunately, the weather for late tonight is calling for clouds...
Unlike eclipses of the sun that require special viewing equipment, eclipses of the moon require nothing more than a desire to look and clear skies. He described how lunar eclipses work...
“Basically, think of it this way” he explained. “You've got the sun, you know, out there in space. And then here's the Earth and of course on the dark side of the Earth, if you will, it's creating a shadow, and anything that happens to go into that shadow, it could be a spacecraft, or in this case, though the moon you can't see it anymore because it doesn't give off its own light. You only see the moon because it's reflected sunlight. So, if anything stops that sunlight from hitting the moon, the moon basically tries to disappear. And that's what will be happening early Friday morning.”
Two total eclipses of the moon are on tap for Utah’s skies next year. One in May and another in November. Utahns will have to wait a bit longer for an eclipse of the sun to come our way with the next one not passing over Utah until October 2023. The next total solar eclipse visible in Utah will be August 2045, or you can always travel to see one...
