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Lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow, causing the Moon to be darkened. [1] Such an alignment occurs during an eclipse season, approximately every six months, during the full moon phase, when the Moon's orbital plane is closest to the plane of the Earth's orbit .
The diagrams to the right show the alignment of the Sun, Moon, and Earth during a solar eclipse. The dark gray region between the Moon and Earth is the umbra, where the Sun is completely obscured by the Moon. The small area where the umbra touches Earth's surface is where a total eclipse can be seen.
A total lunar eclipse occurs when the moon and the sun are on exact opposite sides of Earth. When this happens, Earth blocks the sunlight that normally reaches the moon.
Lunar eclipses occur when the Moon passes through the Earth's shadow. This happens only during a full moon, when the Moon is on the far side of the Earth from the Sun. Unlike a solar eclipse, an eclipse of the Moon can be observed from nearly an entire hemisphere. For this reason it is much more common to observe a lunar eclipse from a given ...
The rarity of today's event has many curious about the nature of eclipses and the difference between the two kinds.
A solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes directly between the Sun and Earth. When the Moon completely blocks the Sun, it is called a total solar eclipse. When the Moon only blocks part of the ...
A lunar eclipse would occur at every full moon, a solar eclipse every new moon, and all solar eclipses would be the same type. In fact the distances between the Earth and Moon and that of the Earth and the Sun vary because both the Earth and the Moon have elliptic orbits. Also, both the orbits are not on the same plane.
An eclipse season is the only time when the Sun (from the perspective of the Earth) is close enough to one of the Moon's nodes to allow an eclipse to occur. During the season, whenever there is a full moon a lunar eclipse may occur and whenever there is a new moon a solar eclipse may occur. If the Sun is close enough to a node, then a "full ...