Super Blood Blue Moon : A celestial Trimurti spectacle.

Super Blood Blue Moon : A celestial Trimurti spectacle.

Friends I crave for your indulgence in reading this long post, which I am hopeful will be of interest to many.

In the modern world of diminishing attention span - with dime a dozen tv channels and social media beaming non stop content 24x7, seven days a week - one has to be innovative in getting noticed. Therefore it is no wonder that, these days, it’s not just enough to be treated to a beautiful natural phenomenon like a total lunar eclipse. Instead, even the celestial spectacles have to be hyped up with phraseologies like Super Blood Blue Moon to attract eyeballs and get noticed. This post is therefore an attempt to understand what this means.

Well the the so called Super Blood Blue Moon is nothing but an extraordinary hype created by the media ( fortunately for the benefit of the public) surrounding tomorrow’s eclipse. The numerous names applied to tomorrow’s lunar eclipse are one of those natural phenomenon, with nicely packaged terminologies, which the Mother Earth has been a witness to millions of times ever since it was formed a couple of millions of million years ago.

This natural phenomenon- of the ever changing positions of the Blue Planet Earth, Moon (that we have all romantcised, specially our Bollywood with scores of romantic songs composed on the moon) and the life giving Sun - will once again be occurring tomorrow on the 31st, January, 2018, across many parts of the world including India and our amchi Mumbai. This event will however be a relatively rare occurrence of a supermoon, a blue moon, and a total lunar eclipse all coming together on the same day.

We, at the Nehru Science Centre, have made special arrangements for the visitors to watch the sky and see the cosmic three-for-one spectacle as the second super-size full moon of this month will undergo a dramatic eclipse on January 31. This will be the first time that anyone on Earth has seen this celestial trifecta in 35 years. For the Americans, who trump up most of the hype on such events, it will be the first time that this event will happen in 150 years.

So, what can sky-watchers expect to actually see during this unusual lunar eclipse? Well you can see a Blue moon, Blood moon, Lunar eclipse, Super moon, all in one package on Wednesday the 31st of January. Permit me to briefly describe each of these four events.

The Blue moon - it just means it's the second full moon of the month. A Full Moon occurs every 29.5 days, but all our months, except the month of February, are longer leading to a mismatch over a period of time. This mismatch of timing means that every couple of years there comes a month with two Full Moons and this will happen on the 31st of this month and therefore it called the Blue Moon.

The Blood moon - It refers to the reddish or copper tint that happens when the moon passes through the Earth's shadow during the eclipse. But then what makes the moon turn red? Although the moon is in shadow during a total eclipse, sunlight shining through Earth's atmosphere gets bent, or refracted, toward the red part of the spectrum and is cast onto the moon's surface. As a result, the lunar disk goes from a dark gray color during the partial phase of the eclipse to a reddish-orange color during totality.

The Lunar eclipse - It occurs when the Sun, the Earth and the Moon are so aligned that for a period of time, the full Moon passes through the shadow of Earth in space (called Earth’s Umbra).

The Super moon - It is a term that has only taken off in the past seven years. Back in March 2011, NASA published an article describing a “ a super full moon”. The precise time of Full Moon that month occurred 59 minutes before perigee, that is, the Moon’s closest approach to Earth as it travels along its elliptical orbit - a near perfect coincidence that happens only every 18 years or so. This must have seemed a worthwhile curiosity to report in 2011. However even today, seven years later, the Super Moon craze is yet die down. For the records the so called Super Moon that we will witness this lunar eclipse (tomorrow), is definitely not on the scale of Super moon that NASA reported in 2011. Tomorrow’s Full Moon is occurring 27 hours ( as against just 59 minutes that happened during 2011) after the perigee. Tomorrow the moon will appear about 7% larger and 14% brighter than usual, making it a super moon.

Tomorrow’s eclipse (in India) will start around 5.18 PM and one can witness the totality of the eclipse at around 6.21 PM. The moon will continue to remain totally eclipsed for about 76 minutes until 7.37 PM. Thereafter the total eclipse will end and the Moon will slowly come out of the shadow of the Earth, ending around 8.41 PM.

Unlike solar eclipses, it's safe to gaze up at the lunar eclipse with the naked eye. And it's easily visible without telescopes or other viewing devices subject to nature’s benevolence that there are no clouds or fog or rain which may ruin the viewing.

For us, the Science communicators, it is a welcome change that we are witnessing this ever increasing interest by the public in celestial spectacles. In India I am reminded of one of the most popular scientists (specially among school students and science communicators), late Prof Yash Pal. He played an extraordinary role in creating awareness on the Total Solar Eclipse way back in the early 1990s and ensured that people came out in large numbers to witness the Total Solar Eclipse, which the DD telecast live with commentary from Prof Yash Pal.

We have now come a long way from the days of obscurantism- in which we were unwittingly driven into over hundreds of years of slavery and colonial rule during which we considered eclipses (grahan) as some kind of evil and wicked happenings that have ill effects, to the current days where we are witnessing hype and marketing of the celestial spectacles of eclipse.

Friends from Mumbai are cordially invited to watch this Trimurti celestial spectacles at the Nehru Science Centre.