What is Beaver Blood Moon? Will India witness the last total lunar eclipse until 2025?

The Moon will turn blood red today (8 November) and it’s the last chance for star-gazers to witness this spectacular phenomenon until it appears again in 2025. A total lunar eclipse will be visible across North and Central America, Asia, Australia as well as New Zealand. India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences has informed that the total phase of the eclipse will be in progress at the time of moonrise in eastern parts of the country like Kolkata and Guwahati. The next total lunar eclipse will only be visible in March 2025. Dr Alphonse Sterling, an astrophysicist at National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Centre told CNN, “They aren’t that common, so it’s always nice to get a hold of them when you can. I think they’re excellent learning devices for people who want to get into astronomy.” Let’s take a closer look. What is a Blood Moon? The prerequisite for any kind of lunar eclipse is a full Moon. In the event of a total lunar eclipse, the Sun, Earth and Moon line up in a straight line in space. During a lunar eclipse, the Sun’s shine on Earth creates a shadow called the umbra. The umbra is large enough to cover the Moon. According to NASA Science MARS Exploration Program, some indirect sunlight still makes its way to the Moon because it is bent by the Earth’s atmosphere. This phenomenon creates two areas of partial shadow called the penumbra. There are two types of lunar eclipses: total and partial. A partial eclipse occurs when the Earth partially blocks the Sun and the darkest part of its shadow falls across the surface of the Moon. While, during a total lunar eclipse, when the Moon passes directly through the Earth’s innermost shadow, the sunlight that hits the Earth’s atmosphere on its sides first gets absorbed and then is radiated or scattered out.

But what gives the Moon its blood-red colour? When the Earth works its magic of scattering the sunlight, its atmosphere filters out most of the blue-coloured light. What’s left over is the orange and red coloured light. This red light passes through the Earth’s atmosphere without getting absorbed and scattered, before its bent or refracted back out. This projects an indirect, reddish light onto the Moon. According to AccuWeather, Caleb Scharf, director of astrobiology at Columbia University said, “The red component of sunlight passing through Earth’s atmosphere is preferentially filtered and diverted into the Earth’s shadow where it illuminates the eclipsed Moon, making it appear red or ‘blood’ colour.” The intensity of the red colour depends on pollution levels, cloud cover and debris in the atmosphere. How rare is a  Blood Moon? Blood Moons are not common. According to _TimeandDat_e, a Blood Moon is sometimes used to refer to four total lunar eclipses that occur in the span of two years. Astronomers call this phenomenon a ‘lunar tetrad’. In a tetrad, the eclipses take place about six months apart with five uneclipsed full Moons between them. Most commonly, about one in three lunar eclipses are total and around four to five total eclipses can be seen from any single location on Earth in a decade indicating that lunar tetrads are rare occurrences. [caption id=“attachment_11589521” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The next total lunar eclipse will only be visible in March 2025. Wikimedia Commons[/caption] The frequency of lunar tetrads depends on a century. Giovanni Schiaparelli, the Italian astronomer, calculated that lunar tetrads vary over centuries. Some centuries see many, while others don’t. For instance, the years between 1582 and 1908 did not have any tetrads whereas the period between 1909 to 2156 will have 17 tetrads. Why is it called ‘Beaver’ Blood Moon? For a long time, the Old Farmer’s Almanac has referred to monthly full Moons based on Native and Colonial and European folklore. Earlier, the full Moon names were used to denote the entire lunar month in which it occurred and through all the Moon’s phases and not just the full Moon. The lunar eclipse of November is called the ‘Beaver’ Moon because this is when beavers start to take shelter in their lodges with sufficient stores of food for the long winter season ahead. In North America, this was also the season when fur traders used to trap beavers for their thick pelts. Will India be able to see it? Yes, but not as prominently as people in other parts of the world will be able to see it. While eastern parts of the country like Kolkata, Kohima, Agartala and Guwahati will be able to witness the total phase of the eclipse, other cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru will only be able to see a partial eclipse because totality will end by the Moonrise in these areas. A statement released by the Ministry of Earth Sciences said, “A total lunar eclipse will occur on 8 November 2022 (17 Kartika, 1944 Saka Era). The eclipse is visible from all places of India at the time of Moonrise. However, the beginning of the partial and total phases of the eclipse is not visible from any places in India as the phenomena will be in progress before Moonrise. The ending of both the total and the partial phases is visible from the eastern parts of the country. Only the ending of the partial phase is visible from the rest parts of the country.” The statement further mentions that the total lunar eclipse will begin at 2:39 pm Indian Standard Time (IST) and the end time of its totality is 5:12 pm IST. Meanwhile, the ending time of the partial phase is 6:19 pm IST. The entirety of an eclipse takes six hours to unfold but the main phase will last for a duration of about 90 minutes. On United States’ West Coast, the whole display will take place from 12:01 am Pacific Time to 6 am and the total eclipse will be peaking at 3 am. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.