Lunar Eclipse to Dim American Skies Tonight

For much of the U.S., the Moon will turn red tonight, the result of a lunar eclipse poised to occur.

A lunar eclipse is when the earth’s shadow moves between the Earth and the Moon, covering some of the sunlight reflecting off of the Moon. Due to this light travelling through the atmosphere, the color of the shadow gives a maroon-red appearance.

That astronomical event is poised to take place tonight across most of the Continental U.S., with the Moon being 96% eclipsed at its peak.

The eclipse begins at 9:23 p.m. EDT, and will start to be covered at 10:33 p.m. EDT. For residents of the West Coast, the sun will just be setting and the Moon rising as the eclipse gets underway. However, the latter two-thirds of the eclipse is perfectly timed for eclipse viewing in the West. Peak eclipse, with that 96% coverage, will occur around 12:12 a.m. EDT (9:12 p.m. PDT) and then slowly reverse course over the next three hours, ending around 3 a.m. EDT (Midnight PDT).

Now that we’ve discussed the eclipse’s presence tonight, will Mother Nature allow you to see it? For most of the country, that answer will be yes. Between the Rockies and the Appalachians, and across most of Florida and the Pacific Northwest, high pressure will keep clouds to a minimum overnight.

A cold front moving along the Eastern Seaboard and into the Deep South will block the show entirely across New England, the northern Mid-Atlantic and the Southeast, while that same front may exit early enough to allow the rest of the Mid-Atlantic and Carolinas a break in the clouds by the eclipse’s peak. Another disturbance moving across the Intermountain West will also cause cloud issues from Montana and Idaho into the Great Basin, Sierra Nevada and as far south as northern Arizona.

The good news is (being late August), temperatures will be pretty comfortable to spend time outside watching the eclipse. A few chilly 40s will be found across the northernmost Upper Midwest, with 50s common from the Northwest to the Rockies and across most of the Great Lakes. Perfect summer night temperatures in the 60s will be in place from New Mexico to the Eastern Seaboard, with only the Southeast, Carolinas, Florida and Desert Southwest likely to see temperatures holding in the 70s throughout the eclipse.

Here are some other facts about eclipses:

• A solar eclipse – where the Moon moves directly in front of the sun – is only visible over a small area of the world. On the other hand, a lunar eclipse can be seen wherever the moon is above the horizon (in other words, where it is night).
• Solar and lunar eclipses come in pairs, with the lunar eclipse occurring on the full moon either before or after the solar eclipse.
• While solar eclipses require specialized glasses to view it (due to the fact you’re looking directly at the sun), a lunar eclipse is perfectly safe to view.
• Many ancient cultures thought that a lunar eclipse was an animal of some sort (a dragon or a jaguar) eating the Moon. They would fire weapons at the Moon to shoo it away.