'Blood moon' will be a sight to behold during total lunar eclipse

[mahatmakanejeeves]

8. "Just the first of four total lunar eclipses."

More on that here: Seeing red: Heavens to unveil a total lunar eclipse early Tuesday morning

By Blaine Friedlander April 14 at 12:45 pm

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To catch the moon with the red tint, check out the totality phase between 3:07 a.m. and 4:25 a.m., says noted eclipse expert Fred Espenak, retired from NASA, who runs the MrEclipse.com website. Look to the southern sky in the wee hours, as total lunar eclipses are safe – and fun – to watch. The Earth sits between the sun and moon, shading sunlight from the usually brilliant full moon.
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Four-of-a-kind

This total lunar eclipse is the first of four-in-a-row and that astronomical treat is called a tetrad. The next total lunar eclipses will be Oct. 8, 2014, and April 4 and Sept. 28, 2015. For Washington, Espenak says that Tuesday’s eclipse and the September 2015 event will be the area’s better events.



Tetrads are part of a 565-year cycle. Between 1582 and 1908, there were no tetrads. In this century, there are eight. “For centuries, we don’t see any tetrads, but now we’re in a period now with a lot of tetrads,” Espanak says. The last quartet was 2003-04, while the next quartet will be 2032-33.

All in the family

Eclipses are big, long extended families and astronomers call them saros. For instance, this eclipse belongs to Saros 122, which started on Aug. 14, 1022, and will end on Oct. 29, 2338. Our eclipse tomorrow is among 74 in the series, at generally 18-year intervals. In this saros, the longest totality occurred on Oct. 11, 1707 (100 minutes) and Oct. 25, 1725 (100 minutes). We encounter Saros 122 again in 2032.

Also, as Warren DeMontague notes, Mars is "full" now too.