What Happens During A Lunar Eclipse

Serpent on Amaya eats moon just before real lunar eclipse

Eclipses can only happen during the full moon phase and takes place two to four times a year. Penumbral eclipses comprise about a third of all documented lunar eclipses, and are very hard to detect. When a portion of the moon passes through the umbra, a partial lunar eclipse takes place. But when the entire moon is blocked by the Earth’s umbra — that’s a total lunar eclipse. A total lunar eclipse does not plunge the moon in total darkness because the Earth does not totally block the sunlight reflected by the moon. Light from the corona – the sun’s outer atmosphere – is refracted by the earth’s atmosphere, which filters most of the shorter blue light waves, leaving the rich red or deep orange light that illuminates the moon during a total eclipse. A total lunar eclipse retains an air of mystery that must have seemed downright mystical in earlier times. Folklore sometimes depicts an eclipse as a catastrophic event, where the moon gets devoured by a mythical creature. For the ancient Mayans, it was a jaguar; for the Chinese, a three-legged toad; and for the pre-Hispanic Visayan people of the epicserye Amaya, it was a bakunawa, a gigantic sea serpent. In Amaya, the legend of the bakunawa is told to the young Bagani. The night sky used to have seven moons, until the bakunawa — a giant winged sea-serpent in the spirit world — was entranced by their beauty and ate six. But one moon remains in the night sky because the gods punished the serpent before it could devour the last moon. Despite that, the bakunawa still gets tempted and occasionally attempts to eat the moon. Superstitions regarding pregnancy and lunar eclipses were also rampant in many pre-Hispanic Filipino cultures. A pregnant woman would be warned against viewing the red-hued moon or leaving the house during an eclipse, lest tragedy befall the child she carried in her womb. Traditional beliefs vary, with eclipse-touched children feared to be suffering from a wide range of afflictions, from black-spotted skin to disfiguration, even madness.

Pakistan to witness longest lunar eclipse in 11 years | AAJ News

Pakistan on Wednesday will witness the darkest lunar eclipse of this century with an expected duration of 50 minutes, considered by astronomy institutions to be one of the longest.

The total eclipse is expected to last 50 minutes, starting at around 12:22am, says department of weather forecast.

Being described as one of the ‘darkest’ eclipses, this is the first lunar eclipse to have occurred this year, and one of the two in the world’s 2011 calendar.

Tonight’s lunar eclipse will be seen across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia.

Fortunately for space aficionados, the lunar eclipse will not give off any harmful radiations, said astronomy expert Dr Mohammad Shahid Qureshi.

“It means that they will be able to view the phenomenon without reserve, unlike a solar eclipse.”

Also, while a solar eclipse can only be viewed in a comparatively small region, a lunar eclipse is visible to anyone living on the night side of the earth.

Periodically you get a lunar eclipse where the Moon actually passes through the shadow of the Earth as it’s on the opposite side of the Sun, and that’s what happens in a lunar eclipse.

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