And every day the lit area gets thinner, reaching the last quarter moon a week later. The day after a full moon, the Moon is slightly less full (waning) and rises a bit later. This year there will be blue moons in January and March for most Australian time zones - the first time this has happened since 2010. This is called a 'blue moon'.Ī few times in a century, two blue moons can occur in a year. And being opposite the Sun, it rises at the very viewer-friendly time of sunset.īecause the Moon's orbit takes slightly less than a calendar month, we get to see two full moons in a month about once every 2.7 years. To paraphrase the NASA video below, think of the reddish hue of the eclipsed moon as the light of every sunrise and sunset occurring on Earth at that moment - the little bits of the sun's glow that are seeping around the edge of Earth's obstructive disc and making their way to the moon.During a full moon the Moon is on the exact opposite side of the Earth to the Sun, so we see it fully lit. This happens because our planet doesn't exactly block all the sun's light from reaching the moon and being reflected back to us. (It'll also be visible from South America.) An hour later, the moon should be fully in the umbral shadow of Earth, which projects a reddish glow on to our lone satellite. The eclipse will begin Monday night at 11 p.m. In the past, though, we've gone as long as three centuries with no tetrads, so it's a good time to be an eclipse fan. This will be one of just nine tetrads to occur in the 21st century. This grouping is called a tetrad, and it's a particularly rare tetrad because there's a good chance that all four events will be visible from most locations in the United States, according to NASA. This week's full-blown eclipse is just one of four we'll see in the coming months - the night will also appear to swallow the moon on October 8 of this year and April 4 and September 28 of 2015.
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