![how to see the eclipse of the moon tonight how to see the eclipse of the moon tonight](https://assets.wired.com/photos/w_800/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/LunarEclipse2-2.jpg)
Oddly enough, the story has a small grain of historical fact in it. When the eclipse happened the natives were terrified at the White Man's power and did not eat them after all. Thinking on their feet, they told the natives that the 'Big White Bwana' would cause the sun to go out. Its heroes, explorers in darkest Africa, are about to be eaten by cannibals.įortunately they were carrying a pocket diary which told them an eclipse was due. In literature, the most famous eclipse comes in Rider Haggard's stirring adventure King Solomon's Mines. So while the moon is in the darkness of the Earth's shadow, some red light is still being deflected round the Earth on to it - and most of that bent light is red. The Earth's atmosphere bends the sun's light like a lens and the red light becomes more bent than the blue. The Earth gets between the moon and the sun. Nowadays, naturally, scientists can explain it. It is, of course, being drenched in blood, said the ancients. Sixteen people were killed.ĭuring an eclipse the moon takes on a reddish colour. While folklore does not specify that live ammunition has to be used, the soldiers in this instance did use live bullets. In Phnom Penh in Cambodia in 1967, soldiers fired their guns during an eclipse of the moon.
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Even now, setting off fire-crackers is an Eastern custom during eclipses. Only a loud noise, the folklore reasoned, could scare the monkey away. In medieval Constantinople and in Egypt, however, people believed a lunar eclipse was really a dragon eating the Earth, while Eastern folklore states that it is the the spirit of a monkey which is eating the moon, and that the world will end if the monkey eats all of it. The ancient Maya (circa 1,100BC) of South America thought a lunar eclipse was a giant jaguar devouring the moon when it had digested it, they reasoned, it would descend to Earth and eat its fill of people. The way the Earth's shadow gradually falls over the moon's surface in an eclipse has led many observers over the centuries to believe that the moon was being eaten. The Syracu-sans, their enemies, were less superstitious and attacked all the same - and won. They were so dismayed by one in August 113BC that they refused to set off for battle. For example, the lunar eclipse in the year 3BC was quickly followed by the death of King Herod.Ĭertainly the ancient Athenians took eclipses seriously. Indeed, lunar eclipses were thought to herald the death of kings and the fall of empires. 'These late eclipses in the sun and moon/portend no good to us,' wrote Shakespeare in King Lear. But that has not stopped soothsayers and prophets associating them with doom and disaster. Most of us could, in fact, see an eclipse of the moon on average roughly once every year from our front windows. For at 18.42 Greenwich mean time, the Earth will start to pass between the moon and the sun, until it reaches the point - at 19.49, it is estimated - when the total eclipse will begin.Īs the Earth's shadow falls across the surface of the moon, it will turn a deep and wonderful blood red.Įclipses of the moon, unlike the great solar eclipse of August 1999, are relatively common - and each one is visible over half the Earth's surface. One of the greatest total eclipses of the moon will cover the planet this evening, creating one of the most spectacular sights in the sky for the past decade.Įclipse aficionados are particularly excited. The greatest show not on Earth - that's the way it's been billed, and it's happening at a place near you tonight.