The 2022 total lunar eclipse that will occur today is the last one for the following three years. On November 8, the eclipse will begin at 2.39 IST and enter totality at 3.46 IST.
Totality is the period of an eclipse when the Moon is completely hidden by the shadow of the Earth. The eclipse’s partial phase will last till 6.19 PM IST, with totality ending at 5.12 PM IST.
Astrophysicist Alphonse Sterling of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, claims that total lunar eclipses typically take place once every 1.5 years. Viewers should take advantage of the eclipse in November because it will be the last total lunar eclipse until 2025, despite the Moon’s excellent eclipse viewing possibilities this year.
What time is the total lunar eclipse?
The lunar eclipse will begin at 2.39 PM IST on November 8, with total eclipse starting at 3.46 PM IST, according to the Indian government’s Ministry of Earth Science. Totality, the stage of the eclipse when the Moon is fully in the Earth’s shadow, will end at 5.12 PM IST and the partial phase of the eclipse will end at 6.19 PM IST.
When the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon, it creates a lunar eclipse by blocking some or all of the Moon’s sunlight. As a result, the Moon’s surface casts a shadow, which is what we can see from Earth.
The Moon will still get some sunlight during a total solar eclipse. Blue light will be scattered in all directions by a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering as it travels through the Earth’s atmosphere. As a result, the Moon appears reddish during the eclipse because it can pass through and reflect the redder light.
The whole phase of the eclipse will be in process during moonrise in the Eastern regions of the country, including Kolkata and Guwahati, according to the Ministry of Earth Sciences. However, totality would not have been complete for other cities, such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Bengaluru, until Moonrise. The eclipse will be streamed live down below.
When it appeared in two crucial scenes of the James Dean movie Rebel Without a Cause, which was released in 1955, the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California, sprang to fame. This made the observatory become a “international emblem of the city of Los Angeles,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Moon completes one full rotation around the Earth every month, lining up in the direction of the Sun during the new moon and in the opposite direction of the Sun during a full moon. But if that is the case, why don’t lunar eclipses happen twice every month?
This is because the Moon orbits the Earth with an orbit that is slightly tilted with respect to Earth’s orbit around the Sun. But this tilt remains constant relative to the stars, meaning that it changes relative to the Sun. That means that the Moon gets in the right position to pass through the Earth’s shadow about twice a year, causing a lunar eclipse.
