Hunter’s Moon, lunar eclipse and Blood Moon happen at same time
Blood Moon - Lunar Eclipse photo by Missy Goodrich, Owner of Perfect You Photography, of Princeton Illinois
Earth will be directly between the sun and the full moon, making a total lunar eclipse visible before dawn Wednesday, October 8, 2014.
The eclipse will happen when the full moon passes directly through earth’s shadow.
“If you live in the Americas or Hawaii, the total eclipse happens before sunrise October 8,” according to earthsky.org. While the total part of the eclipse will last about an hour, the entire event will last more than three hours.
In the Central time zone, that means the partial lunar eclipse will be visible beginning around 4:15 a.m. The partial eclipse will gradually become a total eclipse as of 5:25 a.m. The total eclipse will end at 6:24 a.m. and another partial eclipse will follow it, ending at 7:34 a.m. Central time.
The night before the lunar eclipse, October 7–8, is the night of the Hunter’s Moon, which is the first full moon after the Harvest Moon. During a Hunter’s Moon, the time between moonrises is shorter than usual for several consecutive nights around the full moon, bringing bright moonlight from early evening until dawn on those nights.
With the lunar eclipse will also come a Blood Moon, during which the full moon appears red in color. It is the second blood moon of 2014; the first happened in April. The full moon almost always has a red tint to it during a total lunar eclipse.
“During a lunar eclipse, the moon passes deep inside the shadow of our planet, a location that bathes the face of the moon in a coppery light,” according to information fromNASA’s website.
NASA eclipse experts say some shades of turquoise might also be visible as you look at the moon during the eclipse. That color is especially visible in the first and last minutes of the total eclipse. Binoculars or a small telescope might help.
The 2014 Blood Moons are part of a larger and less-common event called the lunar tetrad, during which four lunar eclipses happen, separated by six full moons, with no partial lunar eclipse between them.
The October 8 eclipse is the second of the four eclipses in the current tetrad. The third was expected to happen April 4, 2015 and the fourth on September 28, 2015.
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