The second lunar eclipse of the year and that this time is partial, is being observed by half the world from the Internet, since the only lucky ones who can contemplate the eclipse in the sky are those who reside in the United States and Canada, since it is visible in its entirety in the northern part of the American continent. Most locations will see up to 97% of the moon slide into Earth’s shadow. North America has the best location to view the totality of the eclipse.
The longest eclipse of this century
It won’t look the same for a long time. It is exceptionally deep, with a threshold eclipse magnitude of 0.9742. 97% of the moon will be covered by the dark threshold shadow of the Earth.
In Spain, the eclipse began to be visible from 7:02 a.m., and reached its peak at 10:03 a.m. Its end time: 11:47 am (the partial eclipse) and at 1:04 pm, the penumbral eclipse . The eclipse itself will last 3 hours and 28 minutes, from when the Moon enters the Earth’s shadow and until it leaves it. The rest of the moon should take on the characteristic reddish colors of a total lunar eclipse.
The eclipse occurs 1.7 days before the moon reaches apogee (November 21 02:14 UTC), its furthest point from Earth for this month. For that reason, this is also the longest lunar eclipse in a span of about 600 years, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, which houses its space launch system, wrote on its Twitter account.
The partial lunar eclipse of November 19, 2021, is followed two weeks later by a total solar eclipse: on December 4, 2021.
As the US space agency explains, “a lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, the Earth and the Full Moon form an almost perfect alignment in space. A partial lunar eclipse occurs when only a portion of the Moon passes through Earth’s darkest shadow. During this type of eclipse, a part of the Moon will darken to a faint orange or red as it moves through Earth’s shadow. “
If you are having the opportunity to see it live, you will know that you will not need special glasses to see the partial lunar eclipse, unlike when we see a solar eclipse. You just have to look for the Moon in the sky.
Why is NASA studying lunar eclipses?
Hundreds of years ago, when the first humans observed the Moon during an eclipse, they saw the Earth’s shadow on the Moon and discovered that the Earth was round. Many years later, scientists continue to learn about the Moon through lunar eclipses. In December 2011, without going any further, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter collected data on how quickly the day side of the Moon (the side that always faces Earth) cools during a lunar eclipse. We learned that if an area of the Moon’s surface is flat, it cools quickly. And scientists use this data to find out which areas of the Moon are rough with rocks and which are flat.
