The Moon will pass through the Earth's shadow between 19:10 and 21:30 EDT, creating a partial lunar eclipse. The eclipse will be visible any location where the Moon is above the horizon at the time, including from Antarctica, Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and south-western Russia.
It will be difficult to see from Fairfield since the Moon will rise partway through the eclipse, and only attain an altitude of 11° above the horizon by the time it ends.
Maximum eclipse will occur at 20:20, when 41% of the Moon's disk will lie in shadow (all times given in Fairfield time).
Timing
The eclipse will begin at 17:49, when the Moon first enters a region of the Earth's shadow called the penumbra. In this outer part of the Earth's shadow, an observer on the Moon would see the Earth partially obscuring the Sun's disk, but not completely covering it. As a result the Moon's brightness will begin to dim, as it is less strongly illuminated by the Sun, but it remains illuminated.
At 19:10, the edge of the Moon's disk will enter the Earth's umbra. This is the region of space in which an observer on the Moon's surface would see the Earth completely obscuring the whole of the Sun's disk, and would find themselves thrust into night-like darkness.
As an increasing fraction of the Moon's face creeps into the Earth's umbra, we see our planet's circular shadow sweep across the face of the Moon.
The table below lists the times when each part of the eclipse will begin and end.
| Local time |
UTC | |
| 17:49 | 21:49 | Moon begins to enter the Earth's penumbra |
| 19:10 | 23:10 | Moon begins to enters the Earth's umbra. Partial eclipse begins. |
| 20:20 | 00:20 | Greatest eclipse |
| 21:30 | 01:30 | Moon fully outside the Earth's umbra. Partial eclipse ends. |
| 22:50 | 02:50 | Moon leaves the Earth's penumbra |
Observing the eclipse
Eclipses of the Moon are easy to watch with the unaided eye. A modest pair of binoculars will give a superb view of the Moon's surface, but are not required. Unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are entirely safe to look at without the need to look through any kind of filter.
They occur whenever the Earth passes between the Moon and Sun, such that it obscures the Sun's light and casts a shadow onto the Moon's surface.
Visibility of the eclipse
Eclipses of the Moon are visible anywhere where the Moon is above the horizon at the time. Since the geometry of lunar eclipses requires that the Moon is directly opposite the Sun in the sky, the Moon can be seen above the horizon anywhere where the Sun is beneath the horizon.
The map below shows where the eclipse of July 15 will be visible.
The eclipse geometry
Lunar eclipses occur when the Sun, Earth and Moon are aligned in a straight line, so that the Earth passes between the Sun and Moon and casts a shadow onto the latter's surface.
Each time the Moon orbits the Earth, it passes almost opposite to the Sun in the sky as it reaches Full Moon. If the Moon orbited the Earth in exactly the same plane that the Earth orbits the Sun, the Earth would pass between the Sun and Moon and create a lunar eclipse at Full Moon every month.
In fact, the Moon's orbit is tipped up at an angle of 5° relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun. This means that the alignment of the Sun—Earth—Moon line at Full Moon usually isn't exact. As a result, an observer on the Moon would see the Earth pass a few degrees to the side of the Sun.
In the diagram to the right, the grid represents the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. As it circles the Earth, the Moon passes through this Earth–Sun plane twice each month, at the points on the left and right labelled as nodes. A lunar eclipse happens only when one of these node crossings happens to coincide with Full Moon. This happens roughly once every six months, usually two weeks before or after a solar eclipse.
Further information
This eclipse is a member of Saros series 138. The position of the Moon at the moment of greatest eclipse is as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 19h41m | 20°38'S | Sagittarius | 30'59" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
Next/previous eclipses
| « Previous | Next » | |||
| Visible from the Contiguous United States | Worldwide | Worldwide | Visible from the Contiguous United States | |
| 11 Feb 1952 | 05 Aug 1952 | Partial Lunar Eclipses | 29 Nov 1955 | 03 May 1958 |
| 19 Jan 1954 | 19 Jan 1954 | Lunar Eclipses | 08 Jan 1955 | 08 Jan 1955 |
| 30 Jun 1954 | 30 Jun 1954 | Eclipses | 25 Dec 1954 | 08 Jan 1955 |
The sky on 23 Nov 2024
| The sky on 23 November 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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36% 22 days old |
All times shown in EST.
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Source
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[1] – |
The lunar eclipse predictions presented on this website were computed using EphemerisCompute. This is an open-source tool which traces the positions of the Sun, Earth and Moon over the course of each eclipse and traces the path of the Moon through the Earth's shadow. It was written by the author and freely available for download from GitHub. It takes the positions of each body from the JPL DE430 planetary ephemeris. |
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[2] – |
Espanak, F., & Meeus, J., Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses: -1999 to +3000, NASA Technical Publication TP-2006-214141 (2006) |
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[3] – |
The list of countries from which the eclipse is visible was computed on the basis of shape files available from DIVA-GIS. |
License
You may embed the map above in your own website. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, which allows you to copy and/or modify it, so long as you credit In-The-Sky.org.
You can download it from:
https://in-the-sky.org/news/eclipses/lunar_19540716.png
Related news
| 07 Jul 1954 | – Moon at First Quarter |
| 15 Jul 1954 | – Full Moon |
| 22 Jul 1954 | – Moon at Last Quarter |
| 29 Jul 1954 | – New Moon |
Image credit
© Collin Grady from Las Vegas, Nevada.