A total lunar eclipse takes place overnight from Sunday to Monday. The moon will begin to enter the Earth’s shadow at 4:27 a.m., the peak phase is predicted for 5:28 a.m., but the peak of the eclipse will occur around 6:11 a.m., when the moon will have already set in Paris. If France will therefore not benefit from the entire event, Philippe Henarejos, editor-in-chief of the magazine Ciel & Space, hope Sunday on franceinfo “take a nice picture“thanks to this moon at”close to the horizon“.
franceinfo: Where are you going to observe this total lunar eclipse from which we will not see optimally in France?
Philippe Henarejos: I’m going to climb a rocky ridge in the Corbières massif to have the moon flush with the West/South-West horizon, above the Pyrenees chain. So, we won’t be able to see the entire total phase of the eclipse from France but, from 4:30 a.m., we will begin to see all the partial phases until 5:29 a.m., where we will be completely in the shadow of the Earth but still over the horizon. We will be able to try to have landscape elements at the same time as the moon to take a nice photo. There may even be interesting spots in Paris or elsewhere in France with perhaps the Eiffel Tower or another monument in the foreground. We invite everyone to share their photos on social networks by mentioning the magazine Ciel & Espace.
Are precautions to be taken with special glasses?
No, because unlike solar eclipses, there is no eye hazard. There is no risk of burning your eyes. The moon reflects the light of the sun and, there, it will reflect it much less since it will gradually enter the shadow of the Earth. It will take on this coppery color because only a few red rays of the sun will hit it, deflected by the Earth’s atmosphere. It is an aesthetic phenomenon to see!
Is the eclipse useful for making observations that cannot be made at any other time?
There are few, but there are a few! For example, there are two observatories in the world, including one in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, which have telescopes with lasers sent to the moon. In the 1970s, astronauts from the Apollo missions placed reflectors on the surface of the moon to reflect these laser rays and measure to the nearest centimeter the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon. There, the opportunity is that the luminosity will be much weaker and suddenly the reflection of the lasers will be seen better. The interest of these calculations is to measure the long-term evolution of the moon’s orbit relative to the Earth.