Eclipse why is moon red

Here's why: Picture yourself standing on the moon lots of dust and craters at your feet , looking down on Earth during the spectacular night-sky event. When the Earth is directly in front of the sun — blocking the sun's rays from lighting up the moon — you'd see a fiery rim encircling the planet.

Even though our planet is way bigger than the sun, our home star's light bends around the edges of Earth. This light gets reflected onto the moon. But not before it travels through our atmosphere, which filters out the shorter-wavelength blue light, leaving the reds and oranges unscathed to bathe the moon's surface. And voila, a red moon. The moon will change various shades during different stages of a total lunar eclipse, morphing from an initial grayish to orange and amber.

Atmospheric conditions can also affect the brightness of the colors. For instance, extra particles in the atmosphere, such as ash from a large wildfire or a recent volcanic eruption, may cause the moon to appear a darker shade of red, according to NASA. This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes.

Nov 12, , am EST. Nov 11, , pm EST. Nov 11, , am EST. Nov 10, , pm EST. Nov 9, , pm EST. Edit Story. I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here. Colors towards the red part of the spectrum have longer wavelengths and lower frequencies compared to colors towards the violet part of the spectrum which have shorter wavelengths and higher frequencies.

The science of total lunar eclipses. The next piece of the puzzle of why a totally eclipsed Moon turns red is the Earth's atmosphere. The layer of air surrounding our planet is made up of different gases, water droplets, and dust particles. When sunlight entering the Earth's atmosphere strikes the particles that are smaller than the light's wavelengths, it gets scattered into different directions. Not all colors in the light spectrum, however, are equally scattered.

Colors with shorter wavelengths, especially the violet and blue colors, are scattered more strongly, so they are removed from the sunlight before it hits the surface of the Moon during a lunar eclipse.

Those with longer wavelengths, like red and orange, pass through the atmosphere. This red-orange light is then bent or refracted around Earth, hitting the surface of the Moon and giving it the reddish-orange glow that total lunar eclipses are famous for. Earth's three shadows. Veteran eclipse watchers will tell you that if you look really hard right at the beginning and just before the end of totality, you may detect a light blue or turquoise band on the Moon's face see image.

This happens because the Earth's Ozone layer scatters red light and lets through some of the blue light that is otherwise filtered out by other layers of the atmosphere.