Bay Area astronomy buff describes Thurday’s lunar eclipse and what’s unique about it

By Brian Hackney

Bay Area skywatchers have an opportunity to view a lunar eclipse Thursday night, with the next one not coming for another three years.

At Almaden Lake Park in San Jose, we caught up with one man who wouldn’t miss it, Jeff Shapiro, board member with the Fremont Peak Observatory Association. 

“We have a 30-inch amateur telescope, which is a much larger telescope than most people ever get to look through,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro, a computer science and software professional, also hold a degree in astronomy from the University of Southern California. 

“The nice thing about eclipses, like most natural phenomenon, is everyone is unique and a little bit different,” he said. “One of the things that’s different is that the moon will rise when the when it’s already in the eclipse phase.”

That means instead of seeing the full moon rising, we’ll see a full moon already just entering Earth’s shadow. The eclipse begins at 7:36 p.m. PT Thursday. Moonrise is at 7:38 p.m., which will look nearly normal. But as the full moon rises into the eastern sky, it will dive deeper and deeper into shadow until the deepest partial eclipse at 9:13 p.m. 

Thursday’s eclipse will cover 96% of the moon, nearly a total “blood moon” as it is commonly known when moon is blocked by Earth’s shadow and sunlight bends around it to project a scarlet hue onto the lunar surface.

“Not quite a total eclipse, but it’ll be pretty close,” Shapiro said. “What you’ll see is that the moon will look like this deep orange reddish color instead of a normal white color.”

Is it really worth taking a peek? We once asked Bill Nye the Science Guy why he still watches these eclipses. 

“It’s exciting, it’s an exciting thing!” Nye explained. “Whenever the Earth casts a shadow on the moon it’s always a curve. So they used that to figure out that the Earth was a sphere, and you can do it yourself. It’s astonishing, it’s just astonishing.”

Shapiro said unlike solar eclipses, no special equipment is needed to view a lunar eclipse.

“You can use binoculars, but your eyes are actually the best thing to just look at it and appreciate it,” he said.

Things wrap up after 9:13 p.m. PT Thursday, with the moon slowly emerging from the shadow until the eclipse ends at 10:52 p.m. and not seen again until 2029.

Let’s hope the weather cooperates.