Lunar Eclipse Tonight!

Tonight, visible from the Northeastern US and else where, should be a total lunar eclipse - the Earth will pass directly between the Sun and the Moon, placing the Moon in the Earth's shadow and causing it to turn a very deep red, since only this visible "color" of sunlight makes it through the Earth's atmosphere. (This is an aside, but this is also why our sky is blue. Blue light from the sun is scattered in our atmosphere and makes it to the ground where we see it, while red light passes through so we don't see much red light when we look up.)

The eclipse will

• start at around 8:30 PM EST,
• reach totality (the Moon is completely in the Earth's shadow) at around 10 PM EST, and remain this way for roughly an hour,
• and end around midnight.

For more info, go to this webpage. For those in the Poughkeepsie area, I believe there will be a public observing night tonight at the Class of '51 observatory on the campus of Vassar College. For those in the Long Island area, there will be a viewing at the Custer Institute. Of course, this will only be visible if it isn't cloudy.