Windsorites look forward to Thursday night’s lunar eclipse

Windsorites are preparing for Thursday night’s lunar eclipse. CTV Windsor’s Bob Bellacicco reports.

Windsorites are looking forward to a celestial event.

Tom Sobocan, an astronomy enthusiast, can’t wait to stay up late into the night on Thursday.

“I’m pretty excited because the last lunar eclipse I saw was in 2022,” he said.

There have been partial lunar eclipses since then, but nothing beats the full effect of the “blood moon.”

“This time, we’re actually going to get a nice deep red,” noted University of Windsor astronomy professor Steve Pellarin.

“This is the first really deep one that the moon is going to pass into the earth’s darkest shadow and so it’s much more spectacular.”

The lunar eclipse happens more often than a solar eclipse, between two and five times a year, somewhere in the world. The phenomenon occurs when the earth is in between the moon and the sun, and the moon passes through the shadow cast by the earth.

“Because some of these sunlight rays are able to bend around the earth and into its own shadow, they reflect off the surface of the moon and give it that reddish-orange color. That’s why we call it a blood moon sometimes,” Pellarin explained.

Most of North America will be able to see the eclipse, which begins shortly before midnight and can be viewed until around 6 a.m. The moon’s entry into the earth’s shadow will give the illusion of dark blotches.

“About 2:30 a.m., the moon will be completely in the moon’s umbral shadow, it’s darkest shadow, and that’s when we’ll get the change, from these bites taken out of the moon, to the orange-red color,” said Sobocan.

If you can’t get up to catch the lunar eclipse, Sobocan said you can see planets from west to east.

“After sunset, Venus being the brightest, Jupiter almost straight overhead, and Mars to its left, and you can see those with the naked eye.”

Sobocan added a space station pass will take place shortly after 8:30 p.m. Thursday night from the southwest to northeast, straight across the sky.

“Roughly 8:37 p.m. to 8:42 p.m., there’s going to be a space station pass across the sky, and the space station looks like a bright star, but unlike an airplane, it doesn’t blink,” he said.

If that isn’t enough, a clear sky in the early evening will show the full moon rising in a different shade of orange.

“If you go look at it again, let’s say at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., it’ll look bright white,” said Sobocan.

“All of the orange color will be gone, maybe within half an hour of moonrise.”

If you miss the lunar eclipse, you’ll be able to see a multitude of pictures at the next Royal Astronomical Society of Canada meeting at the Ojibway Nature Centre on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

Soboccan said the next lunar eclipse is expected next March. Looking forward, stargazers can catch a meteor shower this summer with the peak taking place Aug. 11 and 12.