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Why does the moon appears blood red during a total lunar eclipse?

Photo by hezron salawane on Unsplash


Many places on earth witnessed the total lunar eclipse and we enjoyed it.

But do you know why this moon appears blood red like mars?

The reason for red colour of Mars is that it contains Iron oxides which is nothing but rust on its surface.

What about moon?

The answer for this is completely different and interesting. To completely understand this phenomenon we have to understand what is lunar eclipse is all about. 

When the sun, earth and moon come into one line in space such that earth covers the moon completely then it is termed as total lunar eclipse.A complete shadow (umbra) all over the moon. 

The indirect light through earth gets bent through our atmosphere which is way beyond from our earth surface causing two area of partial illumination(penumbra).

When the moon orbits around earth from area of partial illumination it gets darker and finally completely comes into the shadow of earth(umbra) and at that time it becomes golden, copper or even blood red. 

Photo by Justin Dickey on Unsplash


You all were thinking that then why moon doesn't go full dark? 

Because this appearance of moon is based on Rayleigh criterion lets understand this

As we know earth atmosphere extend out beyond the earth surface containing many dust particles, water and gases. So some of the light from sun falls on the moon after getting refracted from earth's atmosphere. 

The sunlight travels in a waveform and contains range of wavelength from which some fall in visible range, the colours which we can see comes in this range. 

Violets have the shortest wavelength and red have the longest one.Wavelength is the distance between crest or trough. 

from Pixabay


Almost all of the smaller wavelengths get absorbed and then scattered in earth's atmosphere.Only red and orange colour wavelengths doesn't get affected and can travel from the earth's atmosphere without absorbed or scattered. 

The red and orange wavelengths fall on the moon and when we see the moon it appears us in reddish colours.

The reddish colour intensity depends upon how much dust, water and other particles are present in earth's atmosphere. Temperature and humidity also plays an important role in intensity of reddish colour. 

Now after understanding why moon appears red let us know some other facts. 

Some fascinating facts when we will observe lunar eclipse from moon :

  • If we observe the total lunar eclipse from the moon we will see a rosy red ring around the earth.
  • We will able to see all the sunrise and sunsets on the earth at the same  time as the sunsets will be on the dark side of earth and sunrises on bright side of the earth.
  • We will able to observe the transition from day to night (dusk) and night to day (dawn)  as the earth rotates on its axis at the same time.
  • The reason behind the mesmerising sunsets and sunrise in pink, red and orange colours is also similar to the above. 
  • Sunlight falls at low angle on earth and the light get absorbed and scatter in different colours and the the only visible light we see on son is reddish in colour. 

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