Next Sunday, May 15, there will be a total lunar eclipse, which will enter the shadow of the Earth from 8:30 p.m. and will leave at 6:51 a.m. the next day, explained the researcher from the Institute of UNAM Astronomy, Julieta Fierro Gossman.
He pointed out that totality, that is, when the Moon is completely obscured, will be from 10:30 p.m. to 11:54 p.m., “although it will be difficult to observe it completely because this month is the rainy season.”
He explained that this phenomenon occurs when the Moon passes through the shadow of the Earth, and this, like all objects in the Solar System, goes with its shadow attached. When the natural satellite passes through it – which is very large – the eclipse occurs, which lasts for hours.
In this way, Fierro Gossman continued, our planet generates a dim (umbra) and a more intense (penumbra); where the two coincide, the object is darker.
When the Moon transits through the umbra, a part of it is eclipsed, but when doing it through the penumbra it is almost completely dark, because the light of the Sun passes through the Earth’s atmosphere and is projected on it. In fact, it doesn’t go away completely, but instead looks red, he said.
The researcher recalled that in ancient times it was important to study eclipses. The shadow of the round Earth was a way of identifying that it is spherical, something that the Greeks and Babylonians knew.
These eclipses are not common because the plane of our planet’s orbit around the Sun is tilted relative to the plane of the Moon, and they form an angle of five degrees. However, there is always an eclipse season when the Moon and Earth are aligned with the Sun.
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