The Moon will pass through the Earth's shadow between 10:36 and 14:54 EST, creating a penumbral lunar eclipse. The eclipse will be visible any location where the Moon is above the horizon at the time, including from Africa, Oceania, Asia, Europe and Northern America.

It will not be visible from Fairfield since the Moon will be beneath the horizon at the time.

Maximum eclipse will occur at 12:45 (all times given in Fairfield time).

A penumbral eclipse

Like other lunar eclipses, penumbral eclipses 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. But unlike other kinds of eclipses, they are extremely subtle events to observe.

In a penumbral eclipse the Moon passes through an outer region of the Earth's shadow called the penumbra. This is the outer part of the Earth's shadow, in which the Earth appears to cover part of the Sun's disk, but not all of it (see diagram below). As a result, the Moon's brightness will begin to dim, as it is less strongly illuminated by the Sun, but the whole of the Sun's disk will remain illuminated to some degree.

Although the Moon's light dims considerably during a penumbral eclipse, this is only perceptible to those with very astute vision, or in carefully controlled photographs.

On this occasion 80% of the Moon's face will pass within the Earth's penumbra at the moment of greatest eclipse, and so a modest reduction in the Moon's brightness may be perceptible.

The geometry of a lunar eclipse. Within the penumbra, the Earth covers some fraction of the Sun's disk, but not all of it. In the umbra, the Earth covers the entirety of the Sun's disk. Any parts of the Moon's surface that lie within the Earth's umbra will appear unilluminated. Image courtesy of F. Sogumo.

The eclipse geometry

Lunar eclipses occur when the Sun, Earth and Moon are aligned in an almost exact straight line, with the Earth in the middle, such that the Earth casts a shadow onto the Moon. The diagram to the right shows this geometry, though for clarity the Moon is drawn much closer to the Earth than it really is.

The Moon passes close to this configuration every month, when it is at full moon, but because the Moon's orbit around the Earth is tipped up by 5° relative to the Earth's orbit around the Sun, the alignment of the three bodies into a straight line usually isn't exact.

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 the Earth–Sun plane twice each month, at the points on the left and right labelled as nodes. A lunar eclipse results when one of these node crossings happens to coincide with full moon, which happens roughly once every six months.

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 December 11 will be visible.

Map of where the eclipse of December 2038 will be visible. Click here to expand.

The table below lists the times when each part of the eclipse will begin and end.

This eclipse is a member of Saros series 116. The exact position of the Moon at the moment of greatest eclipse is as follows:

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

Source

Espanak, F., & Meeus, J., Five Millennium Canon of Lunar Eclipses: -1999 to +3000, NASA Technical Publication TP-2009-214172 (2009)

Related news

Image credit

None available.