Posted by
moneymaker
500 days ago
(http://www.mauinews.com)
Category: Science Discovery Environment |
On Monday night, Hawaii will have a front-row seat for a total lunar eclipse that will run about an hour and a half, beginning just before midnight and ending at about 1:22 a.m. Tuesday.
“It’s a really cool thing to observe,” said John Pye, Maui Community College professor of physical sciences who plans to be up on Haleakala to observe the event.
The observing should be good. The National Weather Service is predicting that a high pressure system north of the islands will bring in moderate trade winds, with typical windward and mauka showers but otherwise clear conditions Monday.
As the moon passes into the Earth’s umbral shadow, it will take on a reddish-copper color, Pye said.
“It may seem strange that the moon would have any color at all when it’s in the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow, but our atmosphere is what allows this red color to be visible,” he said.
“The atmosphere bends the sunlight around the Earth and pretty much all the colors are scattered away except for the red wavelengths of light which end up illuminating the moon on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun.”
J.D. Armstrong, an astronomer and professor with the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, said there are a number of things that can be learned about the moon when an eclipse occurs, although scientists already have a pretty good idea of what makes up the moon since they have samples of moon dust brought back from lunar explorations.
The solar rays that light up the full moon also heat it.
“With a total eclipse, we can in effect turn off the sun as far as the moon is concerned and look as it radiates heat away in infrared,” Armstrong said. “That was done here a few years ago.”
He said one astronomer is planning to make observations on the albedo, the ratio of light reflection and absorption in moon rocks, and is depending on a dark night to conduct the data collection. That makes cloud cover a concern since clouds will reflect city lights, interfering with ground observations of lights in space.
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